D. B. Wyndham-Lewis
Encyclopedia
Dominic Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL
(9 March 1891 – 21 November 1969) was a British
writer
best known for his humorous
contributions to newspapers and for biographies
. His family were originally from Wales
, but he was born in Liverpool
and brought up in Cardiff
. He served in the Welch Regiment during World War I
, and afterwards joined the Daily Express
where he was briefly the newspaper's Literary Editor.
In 1919 he was put in charge of the paper's humorous 'By the Way' column and adopted the pen name
Beachcomber
. However he was not happy confining his contribution to humour, and gave up the column to the better-known J. B. Morton
. Morton acknowledged Wyndham-Lewis' contribution by dedicating his first anthology of columns to him. Wyndham-Lewis lived in Paris
from the mid 1920s while doing historical research (although he contributed a column called 'At the Sign of the Blue Moon' to the Daily Mail
which his followers regard as his most outstanding body of humorous work).
In 1928 Wyndham-Lewis wrote a biography of François Villon
, a roguish poet
from the 15th century, which seemed designed to be an entertaining read. Later biographies of French
Kings Louis XI
and Charles V
appeared tinged with Wyndham-Lewis' admitted Francophilia, although it was generally accepted that Wyndham-Lewis wrote with a verve rarely found in biographies of this sort of subject. However, perhaps his best-remembered work is as an editor, not as a writer: The Stuffed Owl which he co-edited with Charles Lee
. This anthology of 'bad verse' is justly famous as being one of the funniest of all poetry collections, featuring William Wordsworth
, Edgar Allan Poe
and many others at considerably less than their best.
Wyndham-Lewis had converted to the Roman Catholic
faith in 1921. Later in the 1930s after returning to Britain, Wyndham-Lewis turned to humorous anthologies, and in 1954 he collaborated with Ronald Searle
on The Terror of St Trinian's
(under the pen-name 'Timothy Shy'). Later work also included biographies of Boswell
, Ronsard
, Molière
, Francisco Goya
, and Miguel de Cervantes
. He co-wrote, with Charles Bennett
, the screenplay for the first version of Alfred Hitchcock
's The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1934
).
He also published as 'Mustard and Cress' in the Sunday Referee
till 1935; after another stint at the Daily Mail, he wrote also for the Bystander
and finally a decade-long column as Timothy Shy for the News Chronicle
.
He was no relation to (though he was often enough confused with) his contemporary, the Canadian-born painter and author Wyndham Lewis
.
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
(9 March 1891 – 21 November 1969) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
best known for his humorous
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
contributions to newspapers and for biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
. His family were originally from Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, but he was born in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and brought up in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
. He served in the Welch Regiment during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and afterwards joined the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
where he was briefly the newspaper's Literary Editor.
In 1919 he was put in charge of the paper's humorous 'By the Way' column and adopted the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Beachcomber
Beachcomber (Pen name)
Beachcomber was a nom de plume used by surrealist humorous columnists D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and, chiefly, J. B. Morton as authors of the Daily Express column "By the Way" in the period 1919-1975...
. However he was not happy confining his contribution to humour, and gave up the column to the better-known J. B. Morton
J. B. Morton
John Cameron Andrieu Bingham Michael Morton, better known by his preferred abbreviation J. B. Morton was an English humorous writer noted for authoring a column called By the Way under the pen name Beachcomber in the Daily Express from 1924 to 1975.G. K...
. Morton acknowledged Wyndham-Lewis' contribution by dedicating his first anthology of columns to him. Wyndham-Lewis lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from the mid 1920s while doing historical research (although he contributed a column called 'At the Sign of the Blue Moon' to the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
which his followers regard as his most outstanding body of humorous work).
In 1928 Wyndham-Lewis wrote a biography of François Villon
François Villon
François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...
, a roguish poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
from the 15th century, which seemed designed to be an entertaining read. Later biographies of French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Kings Louis XI
Louis XI of France
Louis XI , called the Prudent , was the King of France from 1461 to 1483. He was the son of Charles VII of France and Mary of Anjou, a member of the House of Valois....
and Charles V
Charles V of France
Charles V , called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death in 1380 and a member of the House of Valois...
appeared tinged with Wyndham-Lewis' admitted Francophilia, although it was generally accepted that Wyndham-Lewis wrote with a verve rarely found in biographies of this sort of subject. However, perhaps his best-remembered work is as an editor, not as a writer: The Stuffed Owl which he co-edited with Charles Lee
Charles Lee (author)
Charles Lee was born in London. He published five novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in addition to many short stories and plays about the working people of Cornwall.-Works:*Our Little Town*Paul Carah Cornishman...
. This anthology of 'bad verse' is justly famous as being one of the funniest of all poetry collections, featuring William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
and many others at considerably less than their best.
Wyndham-Lewis had converted to the Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
faith in 1921. Later in the 1930s after returning to Britain, Wyndham-Lewis turned to humorous anthologies, and in 1954 he collaborated with Ronald Searle
Ronald Searle
Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI, is a British artist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of St Trinian's School. He is also the co-author of the Molesworth series....
on The Terror of St Trinian's
St Trinian's School
St Trinian's is a fictional girls' boarding school, the creation of English cartoonist Ronald Searle, that later became the subject of a popular series of comedy films....
(under the pen-name 'Timothy Shy'). Later work also included biographies of Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
, Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard
Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...
, Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, and Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
. He co-wrote, with Charles Bennett
Charles Bennett (screenwriter)
Charles Bennett was an English playwright and screenwriter, probably best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock....
, the screenplay for the first version of Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 film)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a British suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period....
(1934
1934 in film
-Events:*January 26 - Samuel Goldwyn purchases the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the L. Frank Baum estate for $40,000.*February 19 - Bob Hope marries Dolores Reade...
).
He also published as 'Mustard and Cress' in the Sunday Referee
Sunday Referee
The Sunday Referee was a Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.The paper was founded in 1877 as The Referee, primarily covering sports news...
till 1935; after another stint at the Daily Mail, he wrote also for the Bystander
Bystander
A bystander a person who, although present at some event, does not take part in it; an observer or spectator.*Bystander effect, a social psychological phenomenon wherein individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present...
and finally a decade-long column as Timothy Shy for the News Chronicle
News Chronicle
The News Chronicle was a British daily newspaper. It ceased publication on 17 October 1960, being absorbed into the Daily Mail. Its offices were in Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8DP, England.-Daily Chronicle:...
.
He was no relation to (though he was often enough confused with) his contemporary, the Canadian-born painter and author Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
.
Published works
- On straw, and other conceits (1927)
- François VillonFrançois VillonFrançois Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...
: a documented survey (Davies, London, 1928) - A Christmas book : an anthology for moderns (with G. C. Heseltine) (Dent, New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, 1928) - The Stuffed Owl: an anthology of bad verse (with Charles Lee) (Dent, London, 1930: enlarged 1948)
- King Spider: some aspects of Louis XI of France and his companions (Heinemann, London, 1930)
- Emperor of the West : a study of Charles the Fifth (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1932)
- I couldn't help laughing!: an anthology of war-time humour (Lindsay Drummond, London, 1942)
- Ronsard (Sheed and Ward, London, 1944)
- The hooded hawk: or, The case of Mr. Boswell (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1946)
- Four favourites (Evans, London, 1948)