Jack Lindsay (20 October 1900 – 8 March 1990) was an Australian-born writer, who from 1926 lived in the United Kingdom, initially in Essex. He was born in Melbourne, but spent his formative years in Brisbane. He was the eldest son of Norman Lindsay and brother of author Philip Lindsay.
Lindsay was educated at Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland under J. L. Michie, from which he graduated with first class honours in Greek and Latin.[1] On 27 October 1922 at the district registrar’s office, Waverton, he married Janet Beaton, granddaughter of W. B. Dalley.[1] He started his literary career in 1923 as a poet with a book Fauns and Ladies, illustrated by his father.[2] In the 1920s he contributed stories and poems to a popular weekly magazine, The Bulletin, as well as editing the literary magazines Vision (with his father Norman) and London Aphrodite.[1]
Lindsay founded, with P. R. Stephensen and John Kirtley, the Fanfrolico Press for fine publishing, initially in North Sydney.[1] He left Australia in 1926, never to return. When the University of Queensland Press tried to persuade him to come to Australia for the launch of The Blood Vote in 1985, he declined.[1]
In the UKedit
Lindsay and P.R. Stephensen established two short-lived magazines, Vision and The London Aphrodite, which were published by the Fanfrolico Press in the 1920s.[3] In the 1930s the Fanfrolico Press ceased as a business. Lindsay described that experience later in the autobiographical work Fanfrolico and After (1962).[2] He moved to the left politically, writing for Left Review and joining the Communist Party of Great Britain at the end of the decade, becoming an activist. He started writing novels while living in Cornwall. Lindsay's earliest novels were set in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire; they included Cressida's First Lover (1931), Rome For Sale and Caesar Is Dead (both 1934).[4] Lindsay's historical fiction also includes 1649: A Novel of a Year (1938), a social realist novel that begins with the execution of Charles I of England and explores the first year of the Republic through the eyes of ordinary citizens. He wrote 1649 as an anti-fascist novel.[5] He collaborated with Edgell Rickword amongst others.
During World War II, Lindsay served in the British Army initially in the Royal Signal Corps. From 1943 he worked for the War Office on theatrical scripts. He began an affair with the actor and activist Ann Davies which was announced as a marriage although Lindsay was still married. Ann was popularly known as Ann Lindsay.[6]
After the war Lindsay lived in Castle Hedingham, becoming the subject of defamation and suppression because of his Communist standpoint.[7] Being a prolific writer, he published 169 books including 38 novels and 25 volumes of translations (from Latin, Greek, Russian, and Polish), as well as art, literary, classical, historical and political studies, biographies and autobiographies written from a Marxist perspective.[2]
The Mimiambs of Herodas (1929). Translated by Jack Lindsay, Decorated by Alan Odle, with a Foreword by Brian Penton.
A Defence of Women for their Inconstancy & their Paintings by Jack Donne (1925)
The Passionate Neatherd. A lyric sequence (1926)
Marino Faliero (1927). Drama
William Blake; Creative Will and the Poetic Image (1927)
The Metamorphosis of Aiax by Sir John Harington (1927). Editor with Peter Warlock
Propertius in Love (1927) translator
Loving Mad Tom: Bedlamite Verses of the XVI and XVII Centuries (1927). Illustrations by Norman Lindsay
Helen comes of age. Three Plays (1927)
The Complete Works of Gaius Petronius Done into English By Jack Lindsay with one Hundred Illustrations by Norman Lindsay; Comprising the Satyricon and Poems (1927, privately printed for sale to subscribers only)
The Parlement of Pratlers by John Eliot (1928). Editor, illustrated by Hal Collins
Catullus: The Complete Poems (Sylvan Press, 1948). Translator
Men of Forty-Eight (1948)
Song Of A Falling World: Culture During The Break Up Of The Roman Empire A.D. 350–600 (1948)
Mulk Raj Anand: A Critical Essay (1948)
Clue of Darkness (1949)
1950–1959edit
Three Letters to Nikolai Tikhonov (1950, Fore Publications Key Poets No. 7). Poems
Paintings and Drawings By Leslie Hurry (Grey Walls Press 1950). Introduction
Charles Dickens (1950)
A World Ahead (Fore Publications, 1950). ravel to the USSR 1949
Fires in Smithfield – a novel of Mary Tudor's Reign (1950)
Peace is our answer. Poems. With further prefactory poems by P. Eluard, P. Neruda, L. Aragon and a Foreword by J.G. Crowther. Linocuts by Noel Counihan (1950)
The Passionate Pastoral: An 18th Century Escapade (1951) novel
The USA Threat to British Culture - Special edition of ARENA No.8, June/July 1951. Editor
Byzantium into Europe (1952)
Rising Tide (1953). Illustrated by James Boswell
Betrayed Spring: a novel of the British way(1953)
Rumanian Summer: A View of the Rumanian People's Republic (1953) with Maurice Cornforth
Paul Gillen. Lindsay, John (Jack). The article originally published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012
Jack Lindsay: Poet Of The Crisis Years. The Morning Star (London), 28 October 2014. Page saved by the Wayback Machine
The Jack Lindsay Project. Retrieved 21 November 2017
Referencesedit
^ abcdeGillen, Paul. Lindsay, John (Jack) (1900–1990). Australian Dictionary of Biography
^ abcThe Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Edited by Jenny Stringer. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, reprinted 2004. ISBN 0-19-212271-1 (p. 393).
^John T. Connor (August 2020). "Fanfrolico and After: The Lindsay Aesthetic in the Cultural Cold War". Modernist Cultures. 15 (3): 278. doi:10.3366/mod.2020.0297. S2CID 225448083.
^Michael Cox and Jack Adrian, The Oxford Book of Historical Stories. Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 9780192142191 (p.429).
^"...the record of anti-Fascist historical novels is...surprisingly long and distinguished. It includes....Jack Lindsay's 1649 (1938)..." Janet Montefiore, Men and Women Writers of the 1930s: The Dangerous Flood of History. London: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0415068924 (p. 142).
^Borg, James M. (2004). "Davies, Ann Lorraine [known as Ann Lindsay]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/68985. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ abWilding, Michael. Jack Linsay (1900-1990).Australian Academy of the Humanities, Proceedings. 15, 1990.
^Lindsay, Jack. An article from The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, Vol. 14 (1973).
^Member of the Order of Australia (AM). Subcategory of Order of Australia.
^Lindsay, Jack; Nitsch, Hermann (27 February 2018). Adam of a new world. London: Nicholson & Watson – via Trove.
^Gifford, Denis (1 April 2016). British Film Catalogue: Two Volume Set - The Fiction Film/The Non-Fiction Film. Routledge. ISBN 9781317740636 – via Google Books.