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W.J.Turner, Poet and Music Critic
Born in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1884, W.J.Turner left his home city in March 1907, determined to create a career for himself as a writer in London. By 1946, when he died, he had contributed to the literary and musical life of England in ways that establish him as a unique and fascinating figure. A man of independent mind and provocative originality, he was perhaps the most outspoken critic of his time and, in Arnold Bennett's judgement, the only one of his generation whom it was a `pleasure to read for the sake of reading', as well as being a poet whose `majestic song' left Yeats, in his own words, `lost in admiration and astonishment'. Wayne McKenna's work provides an overview of Turner's life and work, discussing his plays, novels, short stories, poetry drama criticism and literary editing, and well as commenting on the more important literary friend ships in his life, such as those with Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, and Lady Ottoline Morrell. Apart from his literary interests Turner's response, through his music criticism, to the work of composers such as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg and Hindemith, is discussed, as well as his reactions to the work of the great eighteenth and nineteenth century composers. The closest friend in his life was the pianist Artur Schnabel, a kindred spirit, whose work Turner defended against such opponents as Ernest Newman. In such disputes Turner can be seen as one of London's liveliest, stimulating, and uncompromising critics. In studying W.J.Turner's poetry and its prominence in Georgian Poetry, as well as the special attention Yeats gave it in the 1936 Oxford Book of Modern Verse, Wayne McKenna also considers his very last, and still unpublished, poems. He redefines Turner's position in literary history and in so doing adjusts some of the popular generalisations about Georgian Poetry. 0-86140-302-9 £30.00 29/01/2008 |
