J. C. Squire

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For British late 20th century musician of the same name, see John Squire

Sir John Squire (John Collings Squire) (April 2, 1884 – December 20, 1958) was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period. He also moved in society circles.

[edit] Biography

Born in Plymouth, he was educated at Blundell's School and St. John's College, Cambridge. He was one of those published in the Georgian poetry collections of Edward Marsh. His own Selections from Modern Poets anthology series, launched in 1921, became definitive of the conservative style of Georgian poetry (whether or not that was fair). From 1919 to 1932, Squire was the editor of the important monthly periodical, the London Mercury, a publication which showcased the work of the Georgian poets and was an important outlet for many new writers. Alec Waugh described the elements of Squire's 'hegemony' as acquired largely by accident.

In his book If It Had Happened Otherwise (1931) he collected a series of essays, many of which could be considered alternate histories, from some of the leading historians of the period (like Hilaire Belloc and Winston Churchill [1]).

[edit] Reputation

The Bloomsbury group named the coterie of writers that surrounded Squire as the Squirearchy. T. S. Eliot accused Squire of using the London Mercury to saturate literary London with journalistic and popular criticism. Since his death the reputation of Squire has declined as modernist scholarship has absorbed the strictures of his contemporaries, and the first generation of English literature critics in the universities.

Since the 1990s, however, there has been a gradual reappraisal of the periodical network of early twentieth-century literary London and increasing interest in the Georgian poets. Problems with the term modernism have encouraged scholars to cast their nets beyond the traditional venue of modernism - the little magazine - to seek to better understand the role mass-market periodicals such as the London Mercury played in promoting new and progressive writers.