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The Roaring Queen
Book by Lewis, Wyndham
184 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1973
About the author
Wyndham Lewis
120 books162 followers(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 9, 2019
British romans à clef of the 1920s and 30s are always a good wacky time, and considering the all-consuming obsession with the Bright Young People I lived through in high school I was surprised to find one I hadn't already read. This one is... especially weird. I mean, let me just say that in the climax of this book . And it makes sense. Almost.
The Roaring Queen kind of reads like Lewis is trying to be Waugh, and kind of like he's trying to be Firbank or Compton-Burnett...and not succeeding at either. By that I mean that he does the "extended pages of nothing but over-punctuated dialogue" thing, and he does the "these are thinly disguised portraits of all the people I hate" thing, and both of them get very old, very fast--especially the latter. The book, overall, just feels very bitter: mean and sulky where it should be light and satirical. The book was published posthumously, I guess because Lewis's lawyers were like "Buddy, you can't let the general public see this." And who can blame them?
If you're going to read this book, I suggest you play the Roaring Queen Drinking Game. Take a shot whenever:
-Virginia Woolf's character is described as lanky, sickly, dowdy, or generally unattractive
-you see the word "stutter" (yes! ok! we get it! Arnold Bennett had a speech impediment!!)
-Brian Howard's character is referred to as pansy, bugger, queen, fairy, etc
-Brian Howard's character screams, squeals, or shrieks
-Nancy Cunard's character sexually harasses or assaults teenage garden boys
-Nancy Cunard's character threatens to kill someone for suggesting that maybe she shouldn't sexually assault the teenage garden boys
-Lewis makes a snotty coded remark about how Virginia Woolf is just a shittier, female James Joyce
-Lewis makes a snotty coded remark about how Arnold Bennett is just a crotchety old humbug
-Lewis makes what is evidently a snotty coded remark, but you don't know what he's going on about because you're not a literary critic living in London in 1927
The Roaring Queen kind of reads like Lewis is trying to be Waugh, and kind of like he's trying to be Firbank or Compton-Burnett...and not succeeding at either. By that I mean that he does the "extended pages of nothing but over-punctuated dialogue" thing, and he does the "these are thinly disguised portraits of all the people I hate" thing, and both of them get very old, very fast--especially the latter. The book, overall, just feels very bitter: mean and sulky where it should be light and satirical. The book was published posthumously, I guess because Lewis's lawyers were like "Buddy, you can't let the general public see this." And who can blame them?
If you're going to read this book, I suggest you play the Roaring Queen Drinking Game. Take a shot whenever:
-Virginia Woolf's character is described as lanky, sickly, dowdy, or generally unattractive
-you see the word "stutter" (yes! ok! we get it! Arnold Bennett had a speech impediment!!)
-Brian Howard's character is referred to as pansy, bugger, queen, fairy, etc
-Brian Howard's character screams, squeals, or shrieks
-Nancy Cunard's character sexually harasses or assaults teenage garden boys
-Nancy Cunard's character threatens to kill someone for suggesting that maybe she shouldn't sexually assault the teenage garden boys
-Lewis makes a snotty coded remark about how Virginia Woolf is just a shittier, female James Joyce
-Lewis makes a snotty coded remark about how Arnold Bennett is just a crotchety old humbug
-Lewis makes what is evidently a snotty coded remark, but you don't know what he's going on about because you're not a literary critic living in London in 1927
July 10, 2017
Hilarious; a right good skewering. Poor Mr. Arnold Bennett...
January 13, 2026
Perhaps the most purely readable of wyndham's work ive yet encountered. Some of it is even still relevant
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews