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The Revenge for Love
Published in the shadow of the Spanish Civil War, The Revenge for Love is a political thriller attacking the fraudulence and feeble-mindedness of life in the Britain of the 1930s. A brilliant satire on a world that has lost its sense of self and been seduced by the appeal of Communism, it is one of a handful of books (it could be compared to Orwell's Coming Up for Air or Koestler's Darkness at Noon) which defined a particular mood and to today's audience gives an unparalleled sense of how Europe turned toxic on the eve of the Second World War. A major statement by a great artist and writer The Revenge for Love now deserves a new generation of readers and is the perfect introduction to Lewis's work.
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
3 people are currently reading
956 people want to read
About the author
Wyndham Lewis
120 books162 followers(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 1, 2020
There is no doubt that everything written by Wyndham Lewis is difficult to read, and although this is a little more digestible than everything else I’ve read by him, that isn’t saying much. The question is, is it worthwhile to make the effort required?
For me the answer to that is yes, although I have some reservations, and I can fully understand why many would prefer not to engage with the text. I know what Orwell meant when he said there was some indefinable quality missing from Lewis, “a kind of literary vitamin”, which makes everything he read extremely hard going.
The difficulties of the text are not exhausted by its dense and demanding style. There is a cartoonish quality about some of the characterisation, and half way through I had a feeling of being bogged down by repulsive and repetetive characters. The plot meanders and at times is thin, although at least it can be discerned, unlike most of WL’s novels.
Given these reservations, why four stars? First because the satire is savage, effective, and – to my tastes – spot on, and eerily prescient. On Communism and Art:
“Lenin said he hated violinists, because they made him feel he wanted to stroke their heads, whereas all the time he knew it was his duty to bash their brains out.”
On the disdain of an elitist communist for the working class:
“These sons of police constables, and working class agitators broken on the Lancashire looms, are six of one and half a dozen of the other….she did not know which she despised most…but it was for their sake she was making the Revolution…”
On book burning, or what we now call “decolonising the curriculum”:
“Even when the earth had all turned to Marx, there would still be this ominous shadow, fascist to the marrow, controlled by Athenian and Roman aristocrats…a book was a Blackshirted enemy!”
On what we now call “fake news”:
“That’s atrocity propaganda, and a most important part of our work…lies are the manure in which the truth grows”
There is a lot of this kind of thing. It is savage and bitter and not especially humorous, but all the passages I have quoted seem to me to be quite striking and to have a contemporary resonance. Even when WL is talking about something not of direct relevance to today, his imagery is frequently arresting – e.g. on a “Ruskinite” –
“A Victorian Greenshirt who stinks of stained glass and Edelweis and sweats Social Credit.”
The last sixty pages are amongst the best, and justify the description of this novel as a thriller. What is described is essentially a slow motion train crash, but still tense and exciting for all that.
For me the answer to that is yes, although I have some reservations, and I can fully understand why many would prefer not to engage with the text. I know what Orwell meant when he said there was some indefinable quality missing from Lewis, “a kind of literary vitamin”, which makes everything he read extremely hard going.
The difficulties of the text are not exhausted by its dense and demanding style. There is a cartoonish quality about some of the characterisation, and half way through I had a feeling of being bogged down by repulsive and repetetive characters. The plot meanders and at times is thin, although at least it can be discerned, unlike most of WL’s novels.
Given these reservations, why four stars? First because the satire is savage, effective, and – to my tastes – spot on, and eerily prescient. On Communism and Art:
“Lenin said he hated violinists, because they made him feel he wanted to stroke their heads, whereas all the time he knew it was his duty to bash their brains out.”
On the disdain of an elitist communist for the working class:
“These sons of police constables, and working class agitators broken on the Lancashire looms, are six of one and half a dozen of the other….she did not know which she despised most…but it was for their sake she was making the Revolution…”
On book burning, or what we now call “decolonising the curriculum”:
“Even when the earth had all turned to Marx, there would still be this ominous shadow, fascist to the marrow, controlled by Athenian and Roman aristocrats…a book was a Blackshirted enemy!”
On what we now call “fake news”:
“That’s atrocity propaganda, and a most important part of our work…lies are the manure in which the truth grows”
There is a lot of this kind of thing. It is savage and bitter and not especially humorous, but all the passages I have quoted seem to me to be quite striking and to have a contemporary resonance. Even when WL is talking about something not of direct relevance to today, his imagery is frequently arresting – e.g. on a “Ruskinite” –
“A Victorian Greenshirt who stinks of stained glass and Edelweis and sweats Social Credit.”
The last sixty pages are amongst the best, and justify the description of this novel as a thriller. What is described is essentially a slow motion train crash, but still tense and exciting for all that.
July 20, 2025
Misanthrophic social satire still resonates a century later.
The title "The Revenge for Love" suggests one of those syrupy Thrills and Swoon melodramas that once sold in their millions to great suburbs full of desperate housewives, but don't be misled. There is not much romance to be be found in these pages and what little there is ends in despair and disaster. Don't expect much of a plot either other than a flimsy arms smuggling caper that doesn't even get going until the final act. None of that really matters though if you read this book for what it was really intended to be: a caustic satire on British society in the 1930s.
Written and published just as the Civil War was engulfing Spain, Lewis uses the conflict as a backdrop against which to lampoon the social and political mores of the time. The writer's own sympathies leant towards the (sometimes extreme) right so it is the left that receives most of his derision here. However his withering gaze sweeps right across society to ridicule parlor revolutionaries, political bunglers, deluded artists, bourgeois hypocrites, belligerent knuckleheads, corrupt petty officials and avaricious charlatan businessmen. The satire might be specific to its time and place but all these gargoyles are still around today as a reminder that whatever else changes human nature remains irredeemably awful and this gives the novel a degree of contemporary and timeless relevance.
Two themes that recur throughout are betrayal and deception and if there is a broader message here it seems to be that human life is a superficial sham beneath the surface of which there is only emptiness. This nihilism can be off-putting for many readers as can Lewis's curiously offbeat sentence constructions but after taking a few pages to adjust to the odd rhythm of the prose I sailed through the rest of the book in just a few sittings and came to really enjoy and appreciate the acerbic style.
This certainly isn't a book for everyone and I suspect it is little read today outside of those student circles for which it still has some specific literary and historical relevance. But if you like your literature generously spiced with cynicism and misanthrophy and are prepared to put in a bit of effort with the prose this should make for a satisfying read. However political idealists (assuming there are any still around) and anyone with romantic delusions about human nature would be well advised to seek sweeter fare.
The title "The Revenge for Love" suggests one of those syrupy Thrills and Swoon melodramas that once sold in their millions to great suburbs full of desperate housewives, but don't be misled. There is not much romance to be be found in these pages and what little there is ends in despair and disaster. Don't expect much of a plot either other than a flimsy arms smuggling caper that doesn't even get going until the final act. None of that really matters though if you read this book for what it was really intended to be: a caustic satire on British society in the 1930s.
Written and published just as the Civil War was engulfing Spain, Lewis uses the conflict as a backdrop against which to lampoon the social and political mores of the time. The writer's own sympathies leant towards the (sometimes extreme) right so it is the left that receives most of his derision here. However his withering gaze sweeps right across society to ridicule parlor revolutionaries, political bunglers, deluded artists, bourgeois hypocrites, belligerent knuckleheads, corrupt petty officials and avaricious charlatan businessmen. The satire might be specific to its time and place but all these gargoyles are still around today as a reminder that whatever else changes human nature remains irredeemably awful and this gives the novel a degree of contemporary and timeless relevance.
Two themes that recur throughout are betrayal and deception and if there is a broader message here it seems to be that human life is a superficial sham beneath the surface of which there is only emptiness. This nihilism can be off-putting for many readers as can Lewis's curiously offbeat sentence constructions but after taking a few pages to adjust to the odd rhythm of the prose I sailed through the rest of the book in just a few sittings and came to really enjoy and appreciate the acerbic style.
This certainly isn't a book for everyone and I suspect it is little read today outside of those student circles for which it still has some specific literary and historical relevance. But if you like your literature generously spiced with cynicism and misanthrophy and are prepared to put in a bit of effort with the prose this should make for a satisfying read. However political idealists (assuming there are any still around) and anyone with romantic delusions about human nature would be well advised to seek sweeter fare.
December 18, 2019
I read a lot of English modernists in college, but somehow Wyndham Lewis escaped me. The Revenge for Love is not the type of book I'd recommend to most people. It's deeply mistrustful of human motivations, to the point that I think most would find off putting. (Because it too often and too accurately describes reality).
The prose can seem convoluted and imprecise, but a careful reading reveals that its intricacy is worth the patience. I am typically unable to enjoy authors who focus on the physical attributes of characters and scenes, but Lewis has such intimate understanding of his characters and setting, and how the physical actions of his characters manifest their deepest selves, that it unlocked comprehensive abilities I didn't know I had.
The prose can seem convoluted and imprecise, but a careful reading reveals that its intricacy is worth the patience. I am typically unable to enjoy authors who focus on the physical attributes of characters and scenes, but Lewis has such intimate understanding of his characters and setting, and how the physical actions of his characters manifest their deepest selves, that it unlocked comprehensive abilities I didn't know I had.
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December 14, 2024Another novel in which I felt the tone of the narrator was self-positioned securely as being superior to all the characters, mocking their political, artistic and social pretensions. Again, I found it rather difficult to empathize with anybody. There is a moment about 75% through when one of the characters thinks "What beasts all humans were!"; that's pretty much it.
August 16, 2025
An entertaining, thought provoking, beautifully written novel about artists and democracy versus fascism. The story begins with Percy Hardcaster, An English communist agent, trying but failing to escape a Spanish prison. He is shot whilst escaping and loses part of his leg. He returns to England where his status is uplifted by London’s salon Communists, middle class artists sympathetic to the idea of ‘communism’. In London he meets Margot and Victor Stamp. Victor is an Australian artist with some artistic talent, but this talent has not led to a regular income from his works. Margot loves Victor. She is a perceptive young woman devoted to Victor. Victor meets O’Hara and Abershaw who, knowing Victor is short of funds, offer Victor work manufacturing ‘Van Gogh’ paintings and later suggests, for money, that Victor drive some guns to Spain.
We are also introduced to Gillian and Tristram Phipps. Tristram is another talented middle class artist. I particularly enjoyed the heated discussion that Percy Hardcaster and Gillian have about what a true communist is. Another character is Jack Cruze, who has a passionate desire for Gillian.
This book is a good place to start reading Wyndham Lewis. ‘The Revenge for Love’ is my favorite Lewis novel as the characters are somewhat likable!
This book was first published in 1937.
We are also introduced to Gillian and Tristram Phipps. Tristram is another talented middle class artist. I particularly enjoyed the heated discussion that Percy Hardcaster and Gillian have about what a true communist is. Another character is Jack Cruze, who has a passionate desire for Gillian.
This book is a good place to start reading Wyndham Lewis. ‘The Revenge for Love’ is my favorite Lewis novel as the characters are somewhat likable!
This book was first published in 1937.
February 22, 2026
This is a book that I will absolutely need to reread. I always struggle to keep social conniving, gossip, affairs, and society straight in novels—and Lewis, who mixes those machinations with political intrigue, irony, deliberate deception, and the ‘fog of war’ left me hopelessly confused at more than one point in the novel. Still, the characters in Revenge for Love are immediately recognizable, and for this reason alone the novel is worth trying to properly reckon with. Lewis’s intelligence, sardonicism, and caustic satirical streak allow him to show how naïveté, cynicism, and self-importance subtend so much of what might at first appear to be the impersonal forces of history.
May 17, 2023
I just couldn't get into this book. It's the second book I've read about English Communists in the early to mid 20th Century lately (I know, weird coincidence) and it just didn't seem to go anywhere. I didn't care about most of the characters, got to the end, and sort of thought, "So what?"
It's another one sometimes listed as a modern classic the left me wondering if I was missing something.
It's another one sometimes listed as a modern classic the left me wondering if I was missing something.
February 10, 2018
This book is not for me. I am the wrong audience. I do not generally enjoy reading satire and this book is no exception. I found it sarcastic and angry and ugly. I realize many would find it funny and dark, but I am not one.
June 14, 2024
I hated every single second of it
July 25, 2024
A satire of certain political views and personalities, as well as their paths.
Currently reading
February 16, 2026pg 54 pdf
June 3, 2022
Great ear for common English and Cockney speech; but the plot moves way too slowly! I gave up.
November 13, 2012
Some great set-pieces: 1 between the workingclass Communist who had escaped from a Spanish prison camp + lost his leg in doing so, revealing to the County babe who digs communists that his atrocity stories were only de rigueur, and that the nuns had not in fact rubbed salt in his wound but been very kind to him. She turns on him, whereupon he denounces all upperclass Communists who sneer at actual workers - whereupon she has another boyfriend beat him to a pulp and nearly kill him, all the time sneering at him for being an ungrateful little prole, not a real Communist like her. But, its 30s mannerisms and observations become repetitive and hard to follow; its male/female, artist/non-artist dialectic unsatisfying.
Nevertheless, I will say this: I have tried to start this several times, but 40 years after the first attempt I am proud and relieved to have finished it. It can be done.
Nevertheless, I will say this: I have tried to start this several times, but 40 years after the first attempt I am proud and relieved to have finished it. It can be done.
May 15, 2023
An astonishing anti-Communist and anti-bourgeois novel from Wyndham Lewis that is part pulp escape story, part hallucinatory romance, and part invective against George Bernard Shaw's lot of intellectual dilettantes. Miraculously, all these disjointed elements snap into their correct places, just like in one of Lewis's paintings.
Another discussion: the story might be better than Tarr's (1928), but are the characters? Percy Hardcastle is very like a jaded Frederick Tarr, equalling a jaded Wyndham Lewis.
Margot and Gillian Communist, however, are excellent by any standard or measure.
Another discussion: the story might be better than Tarr's (1928), but are the characters? Percy Hardcastle is very like a jaded Frederick Tarr, equalling a jaded Wyndham Lewis.
Margot and Gillian Communist, however, are excellent by any standard or measure.
July 14, 2012
Interesting to read this as I'd just read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Stein, which mentioned Wyndham Lewis amongst others. The characters in Revenge for love seem at times easily led. There is no main lead with each part seeming to take the central part. Felt sympathy for Margot, Vince and Percy, but wanted to shake them for their inability to see what is going on around them.
November 10, 2007
I read somewhere that Lewis considered this his best novel. I think his readers usually agree. I've only read a little of his fiction but I can't imagine that it gets much better.
November 30, 2012
I did manage to get all the way though this, but it was not easy to follow and I'm afraid not my sort of book at all.
June 6, 2014
"Affecting a breezy manner"
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August 30, 2016Um, I found it less infuriating than Tarr?
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews