Life of John Middleton Murry

<p>First Published in 1959 <i>The Life of John Middleton Murry </i>is the first biography of one of the most controversial figures in English letters. Many people know Middleton Murry in one or other of his capacities: as editor (of the <i>avant-grade</i> magazine <i>Rhythm</i> while he was still an undergraduate of <i>The Athenaeum </i>in its last most brilliant phase <i>The Adelphi</i> in the 1920s <i>Peace News</i> in the '40s); as the foremost critique of his day; as author of some forty books on literary religious and social questions; as the husband of Katherine Mansfield and intimate of D.H. Lawrence; as prophet politician or farmer.... Few even of his most vigorous champions or opponents discerned the consistent purpose uniting all his multifarious activities. To trace that is the principal aim of this book. Believing that the duty of the 'official biographer' is rather to present than interpret the author makes no attempt to evaluate Murry's theories objectively confining himself to showing how intimately they grew out of his strange tragic (and occasionally comic) experience. At the same time he makes no secret of his own view of Murry's significance both as a thinker and as 'the representative figure of an age of breakneck social transition'. </p><p>The Life of John Middleton Murry will be of interest to scholars and researchers of historical biographies British history and literature. </p>