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The Thirties: A Dream Revolved
Book by Symons, Julian
160 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 1973
About the author
Julian Symons
242 books68 followersJulian Gustave Symons is primarily remembered as a master of the art of crime writing. However, in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and he held a distinguished reputation in each field.
His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writer.
Symons held a number of positions prior to becoming a full-time writer including secretary to an engineering company and advertising copywriter and executive. It was after the end of World War II that he became a free-lance writer and book reviewer and from 1946 to 1956 he wrote a weekly column entitled "Life, People - and Books" for the Manchester Evening News. During the 1950s he was also a regular contributor to Tribune, a left-wing weekly, serving as its literary editor.
He founded and edited 'Twentieth Century Verse', an important little magazine that flourished from 1937 to 1939 and he introduced many young English poets to the public. He has also published two volumes of his own poetry entitled 'Confusions about X', 1939, and 'The Second Man', 1944.
He wrote hie first detective novel, 'The Immaterial Murder Case', long before it was first published in 1945 and this was followed in 1947 by a rare volume entitled 'A Man Called Jones' that features for the first time Inspector Bland, who also appeared in Bland Beginning.
These novles were followed by a whole host of detective novels and he has also written many short stories that were regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In additin there are two British paperback collections of his short stories, Murder! Murder! and Francis Quarles Investigates, which were published in 1961 and 1965 resepctively.
His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writer.
Symons held a number of positions prior to becoming a full-time writer including secretary to an engineering company and advertising copywriter and executive. It was after the end of World War II that he became a free-lance writer and book reviewer and from 1946 to 1956 he wrote a weekly column entitled "Life, People - and Books" for the Manchester Evening News. During the 1950s he was also a regular contributor to Tribune, a left-wing weekly, serving as its literary editor.
He founded and edited 'Twentieth Century Verse', an important little magazine that flourished from 1937 to 1939 and he introduced many young English poets to the public. He has also published two volumes of his own poetry entitled 'Confusions about X', 1939, and 'The Second Man', 1944.
He wrote hie first detective novel, 'The Immaterial Murder Case', long before it was first published in 1945 and this was followed in 1947 by a rare volume entitled 'A Man Called Jones' that features for the first time Inspector Bland, who also appeared in Bland Beginning.
These novles were followed by a whole host of detective novels and he has also written many short stories that were regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In additin there are two British paperback collections of his short stories, Murder! Murder! and Francis Quarles Investigates, which were published in 1961 and 1965 resepctively.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 25, 2017
Julian Symons is perhaps best known as a crime writer. He also wrote poetry, social and military history, biography, literary criticism ... He was a prolific, as a glance at his Wikipedia page will testify.
This book looks at the role of the arts - particularly literature, and particularly Auden, in the decade of the 1930s. Symons also discusses political movements - particularly of the left - and their connections to those artistic currents.
My knowledge of Thirties literature - particularly poetry - and the politics of the intelligentsia is limited. This book was, therefore, an interesting introduction to the period. Because my knowledge is limited, however, I cannot tell if the the book was tendentious. Symons, to his credit, sometimes mocks his younger self, sometimes is appalled by him. The feeling I took from the book was that Symons was sympathetic to left-wing views, but was not a prosletyser, nor a zealot. Indeed, as he admits - and here is one of those moments he was appalled with himself - he sometimes took on the persona of a more right-wing individual in reaction against the zealous left-ism of the intelligentsia in which he found himself.
The book is short and easy to read - useful if all of this is new to you - and the chapters snappy and concise (each chapter tends to introduce a topic and then spin and divagate around it - Auden, poetry, politics, theatre, the New Left Review, Gollancz, and so on were all introduced in chapters of little more than five or ten pages. The subjects of these chapters would then reappear, weaving their way through the Thirties until Spain and Munich.
The book is then a concise look at a particular period in British political and intellectual history, and will be of interest to those, like me, who had little knowledge of the that period and that milieu. The book also (re)introduced me to some poets I had heard of but knew little of, such as Stephen Spender and Gavin Ewart - and the few line lines and stanzas Symons provides from these poets to colour his themes has spurred my interest in reading more of them.
This book looks at the role of the arts - particularly literature, and particularly Auden, in the decade of the 1930s. Symons also discusses political movements - particularly of the left - and their connections to those artistic currents.
My knowledge of Thirties literature - particularly poetry - and the politics of the intelligentsia is limited. This book was, therefore, an interesting introduction to the period. Because my knowledge is limited, however, I cannot tell if the the book was tendentious. Symons, to his credit, sometimes mocks his younger self, sometimes is appalled by him. The feeling I took from the book was that Symons was sympathetic to left-wing views, but was not a prosletyser, nor a zealot. Indeed, as he admits - and here is one of those moments he was appalled with himself - he sometimes took on the persona of a more right-wing individual in reaction against the zealous left-ism of the intelligentsia in which he found himself.
The book is short and easy to read - useful if all of this is new to you - and the chapters snappy and concise (each chapter tends to introduce a topic and then spin and divagate around it - Auden, poetry, politics, theatre, the New Left Review, Gollancz, and so on were all introduced in chapters of little more than five or ten pages. The subjects of these chapters would then reappear, weaving their way through the Thirties until Spain and Munich.
The book is then a concise look at a particular period in British political and intellectual history, and will be of interest to those, like me, who had little knowledge of the that period and that milieu. The book also (re)introduced me to some poets I had heard of but knew little of, such as Stephen Spender and Gavin Ewart - and the few line lines and stanzas Symons provides from these poets to colour his themes has spurred my interest in reading more of them.
October 31, 2024
When I first read this as a history student back in the 1970s, I was vaguely familiar with some of the 30s poets, even more vaguely with art and theatre but definitely with Orwell and mainly fascinated by the turbulent politics of that decade. Symons other work was (and still is) unknown to me but he opens contexts that I've found absorbing ever since. His persistent theme is to lament the enslavement of creative talent in the service of ideology; frequently more or less sneering but at times confessing his helpless ambivalence and forgiving the earnest self-deceits of artists who (more or less) willingly took up leftist causes as well as those who fled the struggle. Reading the book in 2024 it is clearer (to me anyway) that Symons was writing when British Imperialism was almost finished, about a time when the finish had yet to be seen as inevitable and European fascism threatened to brutally preserve and transcend it. Dissidents from (and mostly of) the ruling class were often traumatised as much as energised by the frailties of infant democracy, the memory and imminence of war and the awful choices that seemed to face them.
Are we nearly (back) there yet?
Are we nearly (back) there yet?
February 11, 2019
These lines, quoted late in the book from a poem by Cecil Day-Lewis, provide a fitting summation of the book:
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse,
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse,
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews