J. C. Hall (poet)
John Clive Hall (12 September 1920 – 14 October 2011) was an English poet and editor.
J. C. Hall | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Clive Hall 12 September 1920 Ealing, London |
| Died | 14 October 2011 (aged 91) Tunbridge Wells, Kent |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Oriel College, Oxford |
Poetry
Hall's poetry was first published when he was aged seventeen in the anthology, The Best Poems of 1938.[1] He subsequently wrote and published a trickle of short poems over seven further decades. Not a modernist, he was included in Dannie Abse's 'reactionary anthology' Mavericks.[2] His work was admired by Philip Larkin who described it as, "just the sort of thing I should like to have done myself" and by W. H. Auden who wrote "in the poems of J. C. Hall we see a craftsmanship that yields to the reader constant pleasure and enjoyment. J. C. Hall should be better known."[3] A Trevor Tolley judged "his work has a carefulness that makes one ready to accept his small output as a mark of spiritual and poetic integrity".[4]
Life
Born in Ealing, London and brought up in Tunbridge Wells,[5] Hall attended Leighton Park School and Oriel College, Oxford.[6] He was an editor of the literary periodical Fords and Bridges at Oxford and became good friends with Keith Douglas.[6] As a pacifist he did farm work during the war and when Douglas was killed in Normandy, Hall was named as his literary executor.[7] He worked at The London Magazine and at Stephen Spender's Encounter as an editor.[5] He edited the Collected Poems of Edwin Muir for Faber and Faber in 1952.[8] A group photographic portrait of Hall, with fellow poets Dannie Abse, David John Murray Wright, Anthony Cronin and John Smith is held by the National Portrait Gallery.[9]
Bibliography
Poetry collections
- The Summer Dance and Other Poems (John Lehmann, London 1951)
- The Burning Hare (Chatto & Windus / Hogarth Press 1966 )
- A House of Voices (Phoenix Living Poet Series, Chatto & Windus/Hogarth, 1973)
- Selected and New Poems 1939–84 (Secker & Warburg, 1986)
- Long Shadows (Shoestring 2003, repr. Faber & Faber 2010)
Anthologies and Shared Collections
- Selected Poems (Keith Douglas, J.C. Hall, Norman Nicholson) (1943)
- Mavericks: An Anthology, (Howard Sergeant and Dannie Abse (eds), Editions Poetry and Poverty, London, 1957)
References
- Moult, Thomas (1938). The best Poems of 1938. Jonathan Cape.
- Abse, Dannie; Sergeant, Howard, eds. (1957). Mavericks – An Anthology. Editions Poetry And Poverty.
- Hall, J. C. (19 August 2010). Long Shadows. Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0571272655.
- Tolley, A. Trevor (1985). The Poetry of the Forties. Manchester University Press. p. 258. ISBN 978-0-7190-1708-7.
Fords and Bridges.
- "J. C. Hall Obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 10 November 2011. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
- Noel-Tod & Hamilton 2013, p. 239.
- "J.C. Hall – Authors – Faber & Faber". www.faber.co.uk.
- Muir, Edwin (1952). Collected Poems 1921–1951. Faber and Faber.
- "David John Murray Wright; Anthony Cronin; John Clive ('J.C.') Hall; John Smith; Dannie Abse – National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk.
Sources
- Noel-Tod, Jeremy; Hamilton, Ian (2013). The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199640256.