Connections , livre ebook

eBook Versions - Stephen Creed

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

164 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Connections presents a collection of the author's writings - including some 120 poems - set within a framework of essays, short stories and other writings.They include an essay on the writer Cecil Roberts, with a discussion of prose poetry; an examination of friendship exemplified by the relationship of French philosopher Michel de Montaigne with writer political philsopher Etienne La Boetie, and between him and novelist Gustave Flaubert; a short biography of the artist and writer Robert Gibbings; a discussion of the relationship between Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, drawing on her poem The Choice, which is reproduced in full; a short story inspired by one of L.S. Lowry's paintings; a profile of the Japanese author Haruki Murakami; and a review of the haiku poetry form.Other content includes an investigation of the special place in London's religious history held by Creed Lane; a selection of 36 of the author's poems; and recollections and biographical details of the author arising from his study, practice and teaching of law - plus details of the writings generated within those formal environments; and a closing collection of 30 of the author's poems that touch upon the themes explored in Connections.

Sujets

Poetry

Informations

Publié par	eBook Versions
Date de parution	05 décembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781843964308
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published by Chineham Press

Copyright © 2016 Stephen Creed
All rights reserved

Stephen Creed has asserted his right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 be identified as the author
of this work

ISBN 978-1-84396-430-8

Also available in paperback
978-1-53966-854-1

This ebook is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be copied, lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the author s
prior consent in any form without
similar conditions being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

Ebook production
eBook Versions
27 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AX
www.ebookversions.com
CONNECTIONS

Stephen Creed

CHINEHAM PRESS
Contents

Title Page
Copyright Credits

Chapter 1
Libraries

Chapter 2
Friendship

Chapter 3
An Iconic River

Chapter 4
Mary, Mathilda and Beatrice

Chapter 5
Factory Chimneys

Chapter 6
Poetry One

Chapter 7
Creed Lane

chapter 8
Poetry Two

Chapter 9
Mr Neville s Guilt

Chapter 10
Other Writings

Chapter Eleven
And Finally...
Chapter 1
LIBRARIES

Cecil Edric Mornington Roberts was a prolific author, over a long working life, writing some twenty-five novels; the first being Scissors , published in 1922. In addition he wrote a further twenty volumes on his travels, autobiography and poetry; his early poetry much influenced by experiences as a correspondent in the Great War with naval and air forces also the British armies on the Western Front. Charing Cross and Other Poems of the Period, published in 1919, is dedicated to The Memory of Lieut. Ernest Kiddier, killed in France 1918 and included a foreword by the late Lieutenant Archibald Don. This volume of war poetry in memoriam of those of the author s generation lost in the First World War and combining criticism of the politicians and others of an older era who led the country into such bloodshed.
Roberts was born in Nottingham, England on May 18th 1892; his father died when he was fifteen and for the next few year he and his mother lived on a weekly pittance but flaunted no poverty to the world . After his secondary school education, Roberts decided against university after hearing, the preparatory school prattle of undergraduates , who spoke without any knowledge or experience of life, such as that Roberts had known. In his autobiography, Half Way, Roberts described his encounter with the Oxford students:

One hour too early for my interview, I sat down in a cafe near Carfax. Presently there entered four undergraduates, future colleagues of mine. They sat at an adjacent table. Between our ages was a world war. Between our minds, I discovered as I listened, was a whole lifetime. I had in that brief gulf between us toured the world, seen nations at the death grip, witnessed the crash of empires, talked with statesmen, ridden in the triumphal train of a king and known the agony in men s eyes as life deserted them.

His school, Mundella, was named after Anthony John Mundella, the son of an Italian political refugee; a man who rose to become President of the Board of Trade in Gladstone s Government in 1886 and a Privy Councillor the next year. Under his guidance the Board of Trade developed what was to become the South Kensington Museum. Mundella was elected to Parliament as the Member for Sheffield and represented that constituency until his death in 1897.
As an ardent reformer (he was a member of the Liberal party) he played a large part in the Education Act of 1870 and the Factories Act of 1875, which reduced the hours children might work in factories and also improved their working conditions. Instead, Roberts took a post with a local firm of solicitors but the job was short lived; the solicitor s affairs not being in good order and he ending his life by his own hand. Then into a position with Nottingham Corporation involving the local markets and allied matters of weights and measures. At the age of 21 he changed direction; teaching as a junior master at a boys prep school. Roberts began writing for the Liverpool Post - serving as its literary editor from 1915 to 1918 - and during the Great War, as war correspondent, reported for amongst others, Reuter s and the Newspaper Society.
After the war a post for nine months with the Civil Liabilities Commission, as Examining Officer for ex-servicemen seeking financial help to start up small businesses. Thereafter, London correspondent and literary critic to the Liverpool Courier. In March 1920 Roberts found himself as editor of one of oldest of England s newspapers, the Nottingham Journal , where he stayed until 1925. Cecil Roberts wrote his autobiography in several volumes; in 1967 he wrote The Growing Boy ; which covered his early years between 1892 and 1908, a mature author looking back at his first sixteen years in a reflective and absorbing way. Chapter 7 is entitled The Author Emerges and tells us of his growing interest in literature: first attempts at writing, the publication of letters in a local newspaper, pieces in the school magazine and an exercise book with some twenty of his poems. He also ponders on those events which influenced his decision to write and the writing itself:

I had now entered my last year at school, I was to leave two months after my fifteenth birthday, which fell in May 1907. All hopes of an extra year, which would have been a most rewarding time for my opening mind, vanished with the Jogoro disaster (This being an ill-fated invention of Robert s father, which cost a lot of money but had no commercial success). I was deliriously happy. Every day a new wonder sailed into my ken. There were now Macaulay s Essays and Milton s Lycida in the English Literature class. My father knew his Milton and started me on Paradise Lost.

In Twentieth Century Authors (Stanley J Kunitz and Howard Haycraft; New York, H.W. Wilson Company, 1942) the entry for Roberts notes: Cecil Roberts has a special gift for easy-going, light-hearted romance, told in a smooth, rapid and vertebrate style . The same publication records: In an interview, Harry Salpeter revealed that Cecil Edric Mornington Roberts is, as his full name indicates, an Englishman... He is tall, lithe, intense . Given Roberts background it is perhaps surprising that he would build his reputation upon light-hearted romance ; but an oeuvre of twenty-five works is a formidable one and clearly appreciated by the reading public in the inter bellum period. However the romantic side of Robert s writing is only one aspect of his output; his travel books are highly regarded, especially And So to Bath; also, And So to Rome. He has that rare knack of combining the description of a town, square or gallery with historical knowledge and anecdote, thereby providing a frame for the visual picture conjured by the mind of the reader.
In And So to Rome Roberts weaves into the narrative the popularity of Rome with the English nobility in the late 18th and early 19th century. Macaulay records, in a letter to Lord Lansdowne, in 1838, that: Rome is full of English. We could furnish exceedingly respectable Houses of Lords and Commons. There are at present twice as many coroneted carriages in the Piazza di Spagna as in St. James s parish . Roberts also intertwined into his travel details the activities of the visiting aristocracy. One notable story is that of the passionate relationship arising between the Countess of Albany and the Italian poet and novelist, Count Vittorio Alfieri; leading to Alfieri helping the Countess take refuge in a Florentine convent, in 1780, before continuing the relationship later in Rome. Whilst coming from a middle class background Roberts had the knack of cultivating friends and acquaintances in all stratas of society and his autobiographies are as much about others as about himself. A good example is One Year of Life, Some Autobiographical Pages, written in 1950 as a journal and published in 1952. From the foreword the following is worth highlighting:

It amused me to write this diary because I am not a person of regular habits in the matter of work and I was also curious to know how long I should stay the course. I shall not apologise for such egotism as is reflected in it. How can a man keep a personal diary without projecting himself?

The entry for January 9th 1950 is illuminating and describes his lunch with W. Somerset Maugham at Cap Ferrat;

We discussed before lunch a writer who had attracted us both by his odd Victorian personality. I have long collected the works of Augustus Hare whose Walks in Rome still holds the field and is a joy forever. I had contemplated a book on him, for he was a finicky snob with aristocratic connections and an obsession about knowing the right people ... It was characteristic that he should have written an autobiography in six volumes and have called it The Story of My Life. It was full of reminiscences of bishops, the university, great ladies and the church and the state.

There are parallels to be drawn between Hare and Roberts, whose own autobiography extended to five volumes; six if one includes Halfway , a volume of autobiography written in 1931 covering his first thirty-five years. This book is full of anecdotes of Roberts encounters with the great and the good of the period, including the following:

At noon I was due to lunch at the British Embassy. There I gave our Ambassador, Sir Esme Howard, a brief outline of the conversation, and quoted the exact sentence of the President s recognition of our case for priority. He saw the significance at once. May I cable those words? he asked.

On another occasion he writes, of his time in New York in 1920:

I soon discovered a colony of fellow venturers. There was Sir Oliver Lodge, resolutely refusing to raise a spirit. I found John Drinkwater, in bed in his New York hotel. He awoke one morning to find himself Abraham Lincoln . As the newest lion hi