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The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka. Here in the Henry Williamson Society's website you can explore the man, his life, and his place in English Literature and history. If you enjoy browsing through the pages of this website and wish to support the work of the Henry Williamson Society in furthering the appreciation of Henry Williamson’s writings, please consider either becoming a member of the Society or making a donation towards the maintenance of our website.
September 2011 — OUT OF PRINT JOURNALS: The contents of journals now out of print (nos 1 to 30) have been scanned. Articles are available as PDFs from either the Journal Contents page or the Author and Article Title indexes, and may be downloaded or printed as desired. While this service is free of charge, those availing themselves of it may wish to make an appropriate donation by using the Donate button above.
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A new article (3 July 2011) on James Farrar, 'Portrait of the artist as a young introvert', written by Farrar's nephew Ben Bennetts, has been posted on The Power of Language website (devoted to 'A celebration of English in all its vigour, variety and versatility'). Farrar, a budding but unpublished young writer, was in the RAF and killed in 1944. Henry Williamson championed his work, publishing it first in The Adelphi, of which he was then editor, and subsequently editing the collection The Unreturning Spring, published in 1950 and reprinted most recently in 2008. ******
Members of the Society are invited to submit their favourite passage (200–750 words) from any of Henry Williamson's books for inclusion in the new webpage that we are developing of extracts from his works.
Henry Williamson and his work: a selection of the views of writers and critics, in no particular order:–
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Ted Hughes, address at the memorial service for HenryWilliamson, 1 December 1977, on Tarka the Otter
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In the confrontations of creature and creature, of creature and object, of creature and fate – he made me feel the pathos of actuality in the natural world . . . I now know that only the finest writers are ever able to evoke it . . . It is not usual to consider [Henry Williamson] as a poet. But I believe he was one of the truest English poets of his generation.
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Michael Morpurgo, Introduction to Salar the Salmon, 2010
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It is a rare gift indeed for a storyteller to be poet as much as a storyteller, to tell a tale so deeply engaging that the reader wants to know what will happen and never want it to end, and yet at the same time tells it in such a way as to leave a reader wide-eyed with amazement at the sheer intensity of feeling that can be induced by the word-magic of a poet. Henry Williamson is just such a story-maker poet. |
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| George D. Painter |
Here is an unrolling map of the labyrinth of three generations, our fathers, ourselves and our children, and the thread leading to the mystery - monster or divinity? - at the centre. In my belief ... the whole cycle [of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight] will ultimately be recognized as the great historical novel of our time, its subject as the total experience of twentieth-century man.
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| John Middleton Murry |
This will be in its entirety one of the most remarkable English novels of our time ... It is amazingly rich in all the living detail of a swiftly changing society; the characters are drawn with such loving sympathy and such firmness of imaginative outline that we are entirely absorbed by their vicissitudes. We are apprehensive for them, we are relieved; we rejoice and are sorrowful; we are angry and we understand and we laugh and laugh again. To be able to do this with us is the novelist's supreme gift ... I believe it is high time we awoke to the splendour and scope of his effort and achievement in A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Begin with The Dark Lantern and read on; you will be the richer for it.
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T.E. Lawrence to
Edward Garnett, 1928
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If I'd known he was so practiced I wouldn't have dared write him.
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Malcolm Elwin, 1957
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He emerges as one of the most impressively gifted and lavishly creative among writers of modern fiction.
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James Hanley, on Young Phillip Maddison
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How well Mr Williamson conveys all the secret thoughts and doings of boys, living lives that are all heights and depths. Magically he suggests the era by subtle decription.
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Allan Wykes, review of The Innocent Moon in the Sunday Times
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To follow Mr Williamson through all the tones and tempers of his chronicle is to emerge with a sense – insistent and triumphant – of having been brushed by experience.
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Michael Bradbury, review of The Power Of The Dead in Punch
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What emerges is a deep sense of truthfulness and accuracy and a complexity of experience.
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Walter de la Mare to Putnams, 1926
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I have always thought that Williamson had a tinge of that very rare quality, or whatever it may be, called genius; and I feel convinced that in time it will be more fully recognised . . .
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George D. Painter, 1959
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It will be among the accepted facts of English literary history that our only two great novelists writing in the second quarter of the twentieth century, after the deaths of Lawrence and Joyce, were John Cowper Powys and Henry Williamson.
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L.A.G. Strong, 1945
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Few writers hold so surely the balance between outer and inner truth; fewer so generously share their vision with their reader.
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John Galsworthy to Edward Garnett, 1926
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Do you know the work of Henry Williamson? It's uneven but at it's best extraordinarily good I think.
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John Betjeman, review of The Dark Lantern in the Daily Telegraph
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There is a magic about this book . . . this excursion into a late Victorian suburb and merchant materialism is unexpected and it is as genuine and affectionate as it is accomplished.
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General Sir Hubert Gough, letter to Henry Williamson
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I have re-read your story of our Fifth Army [A Test to Destruction], and was greatly moved. It made me realise once again what a wonderful people the British are.
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Times Literary Supplement review of The Golden Virgin
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It is difficult to know which to admire the more, the skill of the characterisation or the art by which the character is subordinated to the theme without contrivance and without loss of humanity . . . The contrast between the tenderness of youth and the cruelty of war is most effectively described.
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George D. Painter, review of How Dear is Life in The Listener
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Mr Williamson's prose is like sunlight and clear air; and then, when necessary, it has the taste of fear in the mouth, the terrible beauty of life on the edge of the abyss.
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Kenneth Allsop, review of It Was The Nightgale in the Daily Mail
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The sad beauty of the love story laces a huge exquisitely worked tapestry of period and people.
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Ernest Wycherley, review of A Solitary War in the Daily Express
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This astonishing sequence [A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight]. It is a major mark he is making on the modern novel.
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James Hanley, on Young Phillip Maddison
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How well Mr Williamson conveys all the secret thoughts and doings of boys, living lives that are all heights and depths. Magically he suggests the era by subtle decription.
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Frank Swinnerton, 1937
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Henry Williamson . . . seems to spend his days up to his waist or neck in a Devonshire river, watching the habits of otters, salmon and other wild creatures.
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We will add to these opinions from time to time. Submissions to the webmaster of further examples are welcomed.
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Please note: Work is ongoing on the Research Centre pages. This site is actively maintained, and new content is added regularly, in the form of full-text articles from journals now out of print. Links to these can be found on the Research Centre Author and Title pages, and the Journal Contents page for nos. 1–30.
Your comments and suggestions are valued, please email the webmaster. |
