Letters to Christopher

by Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender's Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929-1939: With "The Line of the Branch"--Two Thirties Journals

Genres: LGBT

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909–1995), English poet, translator, literary critic and editor, was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, where he first became associated with such other outspoken British literary figures as W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice. His book The Thirties and After (1979) recalls these figures and others prominent in the arts and politics and his Journals 1939–1983, published in 1986 and edited by John Goldsmith, are a detailed account of his times and contemporaries.

His passionate and lyrical verse, filled with images of the modern industrial world yet intensely personal, is collected in such volumes as Twenty Poems (1930), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946), Collected Poems, 1928–1985 (1986).

World Within World, Stephen Spender's autobiography, contains vivid portraits of Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Lady Ottoline Morrell, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and many other prominent literary figures. First published in 1951 and still in print, World Within World is recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to come out of the 1930s and 1940s. There can be few better portrayals of the political and social atmosphere of the 1930s.

The Destructive Element (1935), The Creative Element (1953), The Making of a Poem (1962) and Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities (1974), about literary exchanges between Britain and the United States, contain literary and social criticism. Stephen Spender's other works include short stories, novels such as The Backward Son and the heavily autobiographical The Temple (set in Germany on the 1930s) and translations of the poetry of Lorca, Altolaguerra, Rilke, Hölderlin, Stefan George and Schiller. From 1939 to 1941 he co-edited Horizon magazine with Cyril Connolly and was editor of Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1967.

Stephen Spender owed his own early recognition and publication as a poet to T. S. Eliot. In turn Spender was always a generous champion of young talent, from his raising a fund for the struggling 19-year-old Dylan Thomas, to a lifelong commitment to helping promote the publication of newcomers. In 1972, with his passionate concern for the rights of banned and silenced writers to free expression, he was the chief founder of Index on Censorship, in response to an appeal on behalf of victimised authors worldwide by the Russian dissident Litvinov.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

the moon shines above the streets during the blackouts like an island in the sky.

This was certainly a situation where the reader suffers from not having both sides of the conversation. Essentially these are Stephen Spender’s letters to Christopher Isherwood. The poet emerges as both timid and defiantly reckless. The latter was possibly a result of the former? Spender ached for Isherwood's acceptance. This proved to be suffocating. As the world goes to shit in Spain and then all across the world Spender is buoyant but appears to be limited to a handful of ideas. That certainly places him above me but it isn't the best reading experience when we can expect the poet to constantly return to the same 2-3 themes. Consequently I wasn't terribly excited to read this, especially the journal entries at the end.

[Matteo Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Purtroppo, sono lettere "a senso unico" in quanto sono presenti solo le missive che Spender invia a Isherwood, non anche quelle che Isherwood spedisce in risposta a Spender. Il tutto risulta... parziale, per così dire, o quantomeno un epistolario in parte "indiretto", mancando le parole di Christopher...

[Dave]

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