Lionel Britton
Encyclopedia
Lionel Erskine Nimmo Britton (4 November 1887 – 9 January 1971) was a British working-class author.
He was born at Astwood Bank
, on the borders of Warwickshire
and Worcestershire
. His father was a solicitor in the village, although the practice collapsed the year after Lionel's birth. Following the death of his father six years later, Lionel and his siblings went to live with their grandparents in Redditch
.
Britton claimed that the National school
he briefly attended in Redditch called him 'too advanced', so he educated himself for a while at his grandfather's house in Hewell Road, before escaping from the family. After existing in Birmingham
for a week on just a loaf of bread, he left for London, where his first job was as an errand-boy in a greengrocer
's shop, and later in an educational bookshop connected with the University Tutorial College, where one of his literary heroes, H. G. Wells
, was once a tutor. He later claimed that his universities were, as he termed them, 'the penny dumps on the secondhand book-barrows' in Farringdon Road
and around the British Museum
, and that his finishing school
was Speakers' Corner
at Marble Arch
in Hyde Park
.
A conscientious objector
during the First World War, Britton was imprisoned for a year, and, according to some autobiographical notes by his friend Erik Warman, 'he was a difficult prisoner and refused to do any work or take any exercise'. Britton nevertheless managed to find work after his imprisonment, for about six years with the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, the final two as Assistant General Secretary. At the time, Britton had been working on Hunger and Love, the only novel of his ever published, for some years. It is a huge digressive book about the intellectual
life and grinding poverty of a teenage bookshop assistant; Bertrand Russell
was so impressed with the novel that he wrote a five-page Introduction to it. By the time the novel came out in 1931, Britton had already made the headlines with his first published play, Brain, which received such considerable attention because of Bernard Shaw
's generally favourable comments about it.
As early as 1917, Britton had started to learn Russian, and even applied a little later for citizenship
of that country, although his application was disallowed because he had no residence qualification. He had another play published – Spacetime
Inn (1932) – but waited until his third play, Animal Ideas, was published very shortly before his long projected visit to Russia
in 1935. He stayed there at the expense of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, but the visit was a great disappointment for him: he hated the queues, what he considered to be the ignorance of the Russia
n people, and the fact that they would not answer his questions or allow him to walk around freely. Above all, perhaps, he thought that his belief in co-operation as opposed to competition was not being carried out in Russia: he believed that the shortages of almost everything were caused by the government funnelling money into defence
. He stayed for three months, and then took the boat back.
For a several months, Britton remained incommunicado. He had awoken from his utopian dream of Russia to find an only too real nightmare
both abroad and at home. Putnam
, having made only a modest profit from Hunger and Love and losses with Brain and Spacetime Inn, had already refused to give more than a perfunctory promotion to Animal Ideas. It bombed. He was facing ruin as a writer.
Britton escaped to Hastings
, a place with literary working-class associations: the town was the setting of Robert Tressell
's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
(1914). There, Britton worked at Netherwood, a large, run-down property bought by the actor and playwright E. C. Vernon Symonds to convert into a left-wing haven for meetings, trade union conferences, or simply as a guest house. Britton received free board and lodging in return for manual work. He hated almost everything about the house. Now demolished, the building is generally only remembered as the last resting place of Aleister Crowley
.
He wrote more plays and one novel, philosophical works, and dramatised versions of novels by Dickens, Trollope
and J. Jefferson Farjeon. But apart from two translations of rather obscure Russian writers in the 1940s, nothing else of Britton's was published.
On Britton's writing, his friend Herbert Marshall
explains:
Britton spent his last three years as a virtual recluse in Margate
and died in 1971 at the local hospital following a heart attack. Marshall, then Professor and Director of Soviet and East European Studies (Performing Arts) at Southern Illinois University
, had all Britton's literary effects transported to the university, where they remain.
He was born at Astwood Bank
Astwood Bank
Astwood Bank is a village adjoining Redditch, Worcestershire to the south. The village is noted for its successful cricket team, who have twice played at Lords in the National Village Knock Out Final.-Politics:...
, on the borders of Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
and Worcestershire
Worcestershire
Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...
. His father was a solicitor in the village, although the practice collapsed the year after Lionel's birth. Following the death of his father six years later, Lionel and his siblings went to live with their grandparents in Redditch
Redditch
Redditch is a town and local government district in north-east Worcestershire, England, approximately south of Birmingham. The district had a population of 79,216 in 2005. In the 19th century it became the international centre for the needle and fishing tackle industry...
.
Britton claimed that the National school
National school (England and Wales)
A national school was a school founded in 19th century England and Wales by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education.These schools provided elementary education, in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England, to the children of the poor.Together with the less numerous...
he briefly attended in Redditch called him 'too advanced', so he educated himself for a while at his grandfather's house in Hewell Road, before escaping from the family. After existing in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
for a week on just a loaf of bread, he left for London, where his first job was as an errand-boy in a greengrocer
Greengrocer
A greengrocer or fruiterer is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; that is, in green groceries. Greengrocer is primarily a British and Australian term, and greengrocers' shops were once common in suburbs, towns and villages...
's shop, and later in an educational bookshop connected with the University Tutorial College, where one of his literary heroes, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, was once a tutor. He later claimed that his universities were, as he termed them, 'the penny dumps on the secondhand book-barrows' in Farringdon Road
Farringdon Road
Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, Central London. Its construction, which took almost 20 years between the 1840s and the 1860s, is considered one of the greatest urban engineering achievements of the nineteenth century...
and around the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, and that his finishing school
Finishing school
A finishing school is "a private school for girls that emphasises training in cultural and social activities." The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the educational experience, with classes primarily on etiquette...
was Speakers' Corner
Speakers' Corner
A Speakers' Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate and discussion are allowed. The original and most noted is in the north-east corner of Hyde Park in London, United Kingdom. Speakers there may speak on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although...
at Marble Arch
Marble Arch
Marble Arch is a white Carrara marble monument that now stands on a large traffic island at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, almost directly opposite Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London, England...
in Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
.
A conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
during the First World War, Britton was imprisoned for a year, and, according to some autobiographical notes by his friend Erik Warman, 'he was a difficult prisoner and refused to do any work or take any exercise'. Britton nevertheless managed to find work after his imprisonment, for about six years with the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, the final two as Assistant General Secretary. At the time, Britton had been working on Hunger and Love, the only novel of his ever published, for some years. It is a huge digressive book about the intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
life and grinding poverty of a teenage bookshop assistant; Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
was so impressed with the novel that he wrote a five-page Introduction to it. By the time the novel came out in 1931, Britton had already made the headlines with his first published play, Brain, which received such considerable attention because of Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's generally favourable comments about it.
As early as 1917, Britton had started to learn Russian, and even applied a little later for citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
of that country, although his application was disallowed because he had no residence qualification. He had another play published – Spacetime
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
Inn (1932) – but waited until his third play, Animal Ideas, was published very shortly before his long projected visit to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1935. He stayed there at the expense of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, but the visit was a great disappointment for him: he hated the queues, what he considered to be the ignorance of the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n people, and the fact that they would not answer his questions or allow him to walk around freely. Above all, perhaps, he thought that his belief in co-operation as opposed to competition was not being carried out in Russia: he believed that the shortages of almost everything were caused by the government funnelling money into defence
Defense (military)
Defense has several uses in the sphere of military application.Personal defense implies measures taken by individual soldiers in protecting themselves whether by use of protective materials such as armor, or field construction of trenches or a bunker, or by using weapons that prevent the enemy...
. He stayed for three months, and then took the boat back.
For a several months, Britton remained incommunicado. He had awoken from his utopian dream of Russia to find an only too real nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
both abroad and at home. Putnam
G. P. Putnam's Sons
G. P. Putnam's Sons was a major United States book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.-History:...
, having made only a modest profit from Hunger and Love and losses with Brain and Spacetime Inn, had already refused to give more than a perfunctory promotion to Animal Ideas. It bombed. He was facing ruin as a writer.
Britton escaped to Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
, a place with literary working-class associations: the town was the setting of Robert Tressell
Robert Tressell
Robert Tressell was the nom-de-plume of Robert Croker, latterly Robert Noonan, an Irish writer best known for his novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.-Early life:...
's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists is a novel by Robert Tressell first published in 1914 after his death in 1911. An explicitly political work, it is widely regarded as a classic of working-class literature.-Background:...
(1914). There, Britton worked at Netherwood, a large, run-down property bought by the actor and playwright E. C. Vernon Symonds to convert into a left-wing haven for meetings, trade union conferences, or simply as a guest house. Britton received free board and lodging in return for manual work. He hated almost everything about the house. Now demolished, the building is generally only remembered as the last resting place of Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
.
He wrote more plays and one novel, philosophical works, and dramatised versions of novels by Dickens, Trollope
Trollope
The name Trollope is derived from the place-name Troughburn, in Northumberland. Troughburn was originally Trolhop, meaning Troll Valley, and the earliest recorded use is John Andrew Trolope who lived in Thornlaw, Co Durham....
and J. Jefferson Farjeon. But apart from two translations of rather obscure Russian writers in the 1940s, nothing else of Britton's was published.
On Britton's writing, his friend Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall
Herbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
explains:
'He would not allow a single comma to be altered from his original text, so eventually quarrelled with his publishers who refused to publish the vast, lengthy works without some editing'.
Britton spent his last three years as a virtual recluse in Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
and died in 1971 at the local hospital following a heart attack. Marshall, then Professor and Director of Soviet and East European Studies (Performing Arts) at Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
, had all Britton's literary effects transported to the university, where they remain.
External links
- Lionel Britton Papers, 1885–1971 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center