Robert Wilson Lynd

Robert Wilson Lynd (1879 - 1949) was an Irish writer, an urbane literary essayist and strong Irish nationalist.

Life and career

He was born and educated in Belfast, studying at Queen's University. His background was Protestant, his father being a Presbyterian Church Moderator.

He began as a journalist on "The Northern Whig" in Belfast. He moved to London in 1901, via Manchester, sharing accommodation with his friend the artist Paul Henry. Firstly he wrote drama criticism, for "Today", edited by Jerome K. Jerome. He also wrote for the "Daily News" (later the "News Chronicle"), being its literary editor 1912 to 1947. [http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/robertlynd.htm]

He settled in Hampstead, in Keats Grove next to the John Keats house. The Lynds were well known as literary hosts, in the group including J. B. Priestley. They were on good terms also with Hugh Walpole; Priestley, Walpole and Sylvia Lynd were founding committee members of the Book Society. [Robert and Sylvia were considered 'powerful' figures of London literary life: Sarah LeFanu, "Rose Macaulay" (2003), p.153.] Irish guests included James Joyce and James Stephens. On one occasion reported by Victor Gollancz, Joyce intoned "Anna Livia Plurabelle" to his own piano accompaniment.

He used the pseudonym Y.Y. (Ys, or "wise", you see) in writing for the "New Statesman". According to C. H. Rolph's "Kingsley" (1973), Lynd's weekly essay, which ran from 1913 to 1945, was 'irreplaceable'. In 1941, editor Kingsley Martin decided to alternate it with pieces by James Bridie on Ireland, but the experiment was not at all a success. Lynd died in 1949 and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery.

Activism

He became a fluent Irish speaker, and Gaelic League member. As a Sinn Féin activist, he used the name Robiard Ó Flionn/Roibeard Ua Flionn. [See biography at [http://www.ulsterbiography.co.uk/biogsL.htm "Dictionary of Ulster Biography"] .]

He wrote for "The Republic" in its early days. He spoke at the funeral in 1916 of Irish Republican and Marxist James Connolly, whose works "Labour in Ireland", "Labour in Irish History" and "The Re-Conquest of Ireland" he subsequently edited. He was also a loyal friend of Roger Casement.

Family

He married the writer Sylvia Dryhurst, whom he met at Gaelic League meetings in London, in 1909. Their daughters Máire and Sigle became close friends of Isaiah Berlin. Sigle's son, born in 1941, is the artist Tim Wheeler [http://www.concertinaworks.com/TW/index.html] .

Works

*"Irish and English" (1908)
*"Home Life in Ireland" (1909)
*"Rambles in Ireland" (1912)
*"The Book of This and That" (1915)
*"If the Germans Conquered England" (1917)
*"Old and New Masters" (1919)
*"Ireland a Nation" (1919)
*"The Art of Letters" (1920)
*"The Passion of Labour" (1920) New Statesman articles
*"The Pleasures of Ignorance" (1921)
*"Solomon in All His Glory" (1922)
*"The Sporting Life and Other Trifles" (1922)
*"Books and Authors" (1922)
*"The Blue Lion" (1923)
*"Selected Essays" (1923)
*"The Peal of Bells" (1924)
*"The Money Box" (1925)
*"The Orange Tree" (1926)
*"The Little Angel" (1926)
*"Dr. Johnson and Company" (1927)
*"The Goldfish" (1927)
*"The Silver Books of English Sonnets" (1927) editor
*"The Green Man" (1928)
*"It's a Fine World" (1930)
*"Rain, Rain, go to Spain" (1931)
*"Great Love Stories of All Nations" (1932) editor
*"Y.Y." An Anthology of Essays" (1933)
*"The Cockleshell" (1933)
*"Both Sides of the Road" (1934)
*"I Tremble to Think" (1936)
*"In Defence of Pink" (1937)
*"Searchlights and Nightingales" (1939)
*"An Anthology of Modern Poetry" (1939) editor
*"Life's Little Oddities" (1941) illustrated by Steven Spurrier
*"Further Essays of Robert Lynd" (1942)
*"Things One Hears" (1945) illustrated by Claire Oldham
*"Essays on Life and Literature" (1951)
*"Books and Writers" (1952)
*"Essays by Robert Lynd" (1959)
*"Galway of the Races - Selected essays" (1990) edited by Sean McMahon

"Robert Lynd's Anthology of Modern Poetry" (1939)

Lynd was a long-serving literary editor at the "News Chronicle". Himself a minor poet, and married to Sylvia Lynd who was widely published, his sympathies as shown in this selection were most largely with figures from the Irish literary revival, and the Georgian poets. The book was published by Methuen, who had produced a sequence of anthologies in the 1920s and 1930s; Lynd had introduced the very popular 1924 selection by Algernon Methuen himself, called "An Anthology of Modern Verse". Subsequently the firm had produced an anthology edited jointly by Cecil Day-Lewis and L. A. G. Strong. Poets included in Lynd's book were:

Lascelles Abercrombie - Martin Armstrong - W. H. Auden - Maurice Baring - Hilaire Belloc - Laurence Binyon - Edmund Blunden - Gordon Bottomley - Lilian Bowes Lyon - Robert Bridges - Rupert Brooke - Joseph Campbell - Roy Campbell - G. K. Chesterton - Richard Church - Austin Clarke - Padraic Colum - Frances Cornford - Margaret Cropper - Charles Dalmon - W. H. Davies - Edward Davison - C. Day Lewis - Walter de la Mare - Lord Alfred Douglas - John Drinkwater - Clifford Dyment - A. E. - T. S. Eliot - James Elroy Flecker - Viola Garvin - Monk Gibbon - Stella Gibbons - W. W. Gibson - Oliver Gogarty - Louis Golding - Gerald Gould - Bryan Guinness - George Rostrevor Hamilton - Thomas Hardy - Christopher Hassall - F. R. Higgins - Ralph Hodgson - Gerard Manley Hopkins - A. E. Housman - Aldous Huxley - Douglas Hyde - James Joyce - Frank Kendon - T. M. Kettle - Rudyard Kipling - D. H. Lawrence - Francis Ledwidge - Eiluned Lewis - F. L. Lucas - Sylvia Lynd - Thomas MacDonagh - Louis Macneice - John Masefield - Charlotte Mew - Alice Meynell - Alice Milligan - Harold Monro - T. Sturge Moore - Sir Henry Newbolt - Robert Nichols - Alfred Noyes - Frank O'Connor - Moira O'Neill - Seamus O'Sullivan - Wilfred Owen - Herbert Palmer - Padraic H. Pearse - Ruth Pitter - Hugh Gordon Porteus - Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch - Herbert Read - Ernest Rhys - Richard Rowley - V. Sackville-West - Siegfried Sassoon - Edward Shanks - Fredegond Shove - Edith Sitwell - Stanley Snaith - Charles H. Sorley - Stephen Spender - Sir John Squire - William Force Stead - James Stephens - L. A. G. Strong - Dylan Thomas - Edward Thomas - Edward Thompson - Herbert Trench - W. J. Turner - Katharine Tynan - Sir William Watson - Dorothy Wellesley - Evelyn Underhill - Sir Robert Vansittart - Sylvia Townsend Warner - Charles Williams - Humbert Wolfe - W. B. Yeats - Andrew Young - Francis Brett Young

ee also

* List of Northern Irish writers

Notes

External links

* [http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/robertlynd.htm About the Blue Plaque]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1606_275/ai_58055875 Contemporary Review article]
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