Basil Davenport

Basil Davenport (1905-1966) was an American literary critic, academic, anthologist, and writer of science fiction novels[1] and other genres. He was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1905, the son of Ira William Davenport and Emily Andrews Davison. He died on April 7, 1966, in New York County, New York, at the age of 61.

Biography

The son of Ira William and Emily Andrews Davenport, he had one brother, John A. Davenport.[2] They grew up in Louisville. He attended the Taft School, graduated from Yale in 1926, studied the classics for two years at the University of Oxford, and then taught at Rutgers.[3] Basil Davenport enlisted in the U. S. Army on March 5, 1943, in New York, during World War II when he was 37 years old.[4] He was never married.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University has an archive of his collected papers.[5]

Introductory essays

He frequently wrote introductions to works by other authors, such as The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas, and The House of the Seven Gables[6] by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote a sixty-page introduction to the Utopian novel Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright.[7]

Editor of anthologies

His edited books include The Portable Roman Reader[8] and in 1955 a short critical study, Inquiry into Science Fiction.[9][10]

Science fiction

Davenport described himself as a lifelong fan of science fiction.[11] His science fiction works included Tales to Be Told in the Dark.[12] He was a member of the Hydra Club, a group of sci-fi professionals and their acquaintances who met in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.

The New York Times and Saturday Review book critic

For the Saturday Review, Davenport reviewed James Branch Cabell's novel Hamlet Had An Uncle, and called Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919), Cabell's previous and best-known novel, "a masterpiece."[13] In the early 1950s, he co-wrote a science-fiction book review column, called "In the Realm of the Spacemen" or "Spacemen's Realm," for The New York Times.

References
  1. "SF Basil Davenport". SF Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  2. Smith, Warren Allen (25 July 2014). MR. SMITH, THE SYBARITE Who Also Was a Teacher. ISBN 9781312385221.
  3. "Davenport, Basil, 1905-1966 - Social Networks and Archival Context". snaccooperative.org. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  4. United States National Archives and Records Administration (2005). U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc.
  5. "Collection: Basil Davenport papers | Archives at Yale". archives.yale.edu. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  6. Hawthorne, Nathaniel (2005). The house of the seven gables. Introduction by Basil Davenport. Doylestown, PA: Wildside Press. ISBN 1-55742-302-4.
  7. "Authors : Davenport, Basil : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia". www.sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  8. Davenport, Basil, ed. (1979). The Portable Roman reader (Reprinted ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-015056-0.
  9. Science Fiction Encyclopedia. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/davenport_basil#sthash.iU6O9hyF
  10. Science Fiction Encyclopedia. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/davenport_basil
  11. "F&SF house advertisement". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. October 1959. pp. Back cover.
  12. Davenport, Basil (1960). Tales to Be Told in the Dark. Ballantine. ASIN B0052CQZM8.
  13. "In the Lineage of Jurgen" by Basil Davenport (Review of Hamlet Had an Uncle, by James Branch Cabell), The Saturday Review, January 27, 1940, p. 11.
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