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Dealing frankly with all areas of his private and professional life, and the central role his homosexuality played in them, this book paints a fascinating portrait of William Plomer (1903-73), author of Turbott Wolfe, from his beginnings in South Africa to his rise to literary and publishing prominence in England in the 1930s and 1940s.
He was E. M Forster's 'favorite contemporary poet'. W. H Auden extolled his 'first-class visual imagination'. Stephen Spender considered his output 'among the best English poems written in the present century'. Yet for most readers, William Plomer (1903--1973) is now a faintly-remembered name. Born in Pietersburg, South Africa, Plomer settled in London in 1929, where he went on to occupy a central position in English letters. By the time of his death he had published ten books of poetry. In a voice impersonal and strange, Plomer's best poems reveal a mind that delights in the 'sensory, pictorial and plastic' (though not, as he thought, at the expense of the metaphysical).
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"Ali Pasha may have kept 'a carefully guarded Antinous' in his harem, p. 90 -dm.
Few have written more beautifully about the British countryside than Francis Kilvert. A country clergyman born in 1840, Kilvert spent much of his time visiting parishioners, walking the lanes and fields of Herefordshire and writing in his diary. Full of passionate delight in the natural world and the glory of the changing seasons, his diaries are as generous, spontaneous and vivacious as Kilvert himself. He is an irresistible companion. This new edition of William Plomer’s original selection contains new archival material as well as a fascinating introduction illuminating Kilvert’s world and the history of the diaries. ‘One of the best books in English’ Sunday Times 'Kilvert has touched and delighted (and mildly shocked) readers of his diaries ever since they were first published. New readers are in for a treat' Alan Bennett
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A record of a struggle against the forces of prejudice and fear, Turbott Wolfe is a landmark in both English and South African literature which remains timely today. Published in 1925, the wide critical attention it attracted in England was matched by the political controversy it caused in South Africa.