Edward Upward: Art and Life

Overview

The novelist and short story writer Edward Upward (1903-2009) is famous for being the unknown member of the W. H. Auden circle, though he was revered by his peers – Auden, Day Lewis, Isherwood and Spender – for his intellect, high literary gifts and unswerving political commitment. His lifelong friendship with Christopher Isherwood was forged at school and university, with each regarding the other as the first reader of his work. At Cambridge they invented the bizarre village of Mortmere, which with its combination of reality and fantasy had an important role in shaping the dominant British literary culture of the 1930s.

Author Biography

Peter Stansky studied at Yale and Cambridge and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard, where he taught before moving to the Stanford University, California, becoming the holder of the endowed Frances and Charles Field Chair in History. He has written extensively on modern British culture, particularly on William Morris, George Orwell, the Bloomsbury Group, the London Blitz, as well as on Julian Bell and John Cornford.