Robert Herring was a Scottish (and Welsh) writer and poet, remembered as an early film critic and editor of the significant literary magazine, Life and Letters Today.

Robert Herring was assistant editor of The London Mercury from 1925 to 1934. He took over editorship of Life and Letters Today in 1935, when it was purchased by Bryher

Bryher

Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...

, and held it for about 15 years, working initially with Petrie Townsend. The first issue featured the following articles :

Mary Butts

Mary Butts

Mary Frances Butts was a British modernist writer. Her work found recognition in important literary magazines such as The Bookman and The Little Review, as well as from some of her fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Bryher...

 - "The Guest"

Murray Constantine - "The Power of Merlin"

H. D. - "The Dancer"

Havelock Ellis

Havelock Ellis

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...

- "Rousseau To-day"

Kenneth Macpherson

Kenneth Macpherson

Kenneth Macpherson was born in Scotland, 27 March 1902, the son of Scottish painter, John 'Pop' Macpherson and Clara Macpherson. Descended from 6 generations of artists, Macpherson was a novelist, photographer, critic and film-maker...

 - "Out of the Air"

Lotte Reininger - "Bristol"

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

 - "English and American Language in Literature"
The issue also included contributions by Sergei M. Eisenstein, André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

, Horace Gregory

Horace Gregory

Horace Gregory was a prize-winning American poet, translator of classic poetry, literary critic and college professor.-Life:...

, Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell

Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature....

 and Eric Walter White. It continued to publish major figures, including Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

 and Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

. The title of the magazine was Life and Letters Today, but reverted to its pre-Bryher title, Life and Letters, when the publication took over the London Mercury

London Mercury

The London Mercury was the name of several periodicals published in London from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The earliest was a newspaper that appeared during the Exclusion Bill crisis; it lasted only 56 issues...

and Bookman titles.
Herring became close friends of the Pool Group

Pool Group

The Pool Group were a trio of interwar period artists, filmmakers and poets consisting of Hilda Doolittle, Kenneth Macpherson and Bryher . Their work has been studied by poetry and film historians as well as by scholars of mysticism, feminism, psychoanalysis and LGBT history...

 (H.D.

H.D.

H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...

, Bryher

Bryher

Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...

 and Kenneth Macpherson

Kenneth Macpherson

Kenneth Macpherson was born in Scotland, 27 March 1902, the son of Scottish painter, John 'Pop' Macpherson and Clara Macpherson. Descended from 6 generations of artists, Macpherson was a novelist, photographer, critic and film-maker...

), having associated with them since their interest in experimental film in the late 1920s.
Herring played the pianist in Macpherson’s avant-garde production, Borderline

Borderline (1930 film)

Borderline is a 1930 film, written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet, Switzerland. The silent film, with English inter-titles, is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships, using avant-garde experimental...

 (1930).

Works

• The President's Hat (1926)
• Films Of The Year (1927)
• Films of the Year, 1927 – 1928 (1929
• Adam and Evelyn at Kew, or Revolt in the Gardens (Elkin Matthews & Marrot, 1930) (Colour illustrations by Edward Bawden)
• Cactus Coast (1934) novel
• Cinema Survey (with Dallas Bower
  Dallas Bower
  Dallas Bower was a British film and television director and producer.-Selected filmography:Director* The Path of Glory * Alice in Wonderland * The Second Mrs Tanqueray...
  
   and Bryher
  Bryher
  Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...
  
  ).
• The Impecunious Captain or Love as Liv'd (1944)
• Westward Look.Poems 1922-45 (1945)

Further reading

• Meic Stephens, 'The Third Man: Robert Herring and Life and Letters To-day', Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays, 1997, pp. 157-69