Journey to the Border

Overview

Edward Upward’s acclaimed and partly autobiographical novel – printed here in a newly revised version – was originally published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1938. It relates the growing disillusionment of a politically-committed tutor who is attached to the household of a philistine and reactionary country gentleman. His revulsion at the behaviour of his employers and their friends leads him to the brink of madness, from which he is saved only by his resolve to contribute to the movement for social revolution. Stephen Spender, in his enthusiastic introduction, applauds Upward’s achievement, describing him as ‘a visionary of wonderful language and extraordinary power.’

Author Biography

Edward Upward (1903-2009) was the last of the ‘Auden generation’. While at Cambridge, he created with Christopher Isherwood a series of stories about the fictitious village of Mortmere. After graduating he was a private tutor and for thirty years a schoolmaster, until his retirement in 1961. His first novel, Journey to the Border, was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1938 and between 1962 and 1977 Heinemann published his trilogy The Spiral Ascent. Upward's The Railway Accident and Other Stories was a Penguin Classic. Enitharmon has been Upward's exclusive publisher from 1994, issuing a series of critically acclaimed stories as well as memoirs of Isherwood and Auden. Edward Upward died in 2009, at the age of 105 years.