J. A. Lindon
| J. A. Lindon | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1891 |
| Died | 16 December 1979 |
| Occupation | Writer, poet |
| Genre | light verse, constrained writing |
James Albert Lindon (1891 – 16 December 1979)[1] was an English puzzle enthusiast and poet specializing in light verse, constrained writing, and children's poetry.
Lindon was based in Addlestone and Weybridge.[2][3] His poems often won weekly newspaper competitions, but seldom appeared in anthologies.[2] Among his anthologized works include numerous parodies, including spoofs of Dylan Thomas, E. E. Cummings, T. E. Brown, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and Ernest L. Thayer.[2] His palindromic poems appeared occasionally in Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics, and several were collected in Howard W. Bergerson's Palindromes and Anagrams.[4] Lindon is also noted as being the world's first writer of vocabularyclept poetry, in which poems are constructed by rearranging the words of an existing poem.[5][6]
Author Martin Gardner often spoke highly of Lindon's poetry, referring to him as the greatest English writer of comic verse.[2][3][4] His skill at wordplay was similarly lauded, with Gardner, Bergerson, Dmitri Borgmann, and others proclaiming him to be among the world's finest palindromists.[4][5][7][8]
In addition to being a poet, Lindon was an accomplished writer and solver of puzzles, especially those in recreational mathematics. He was responsible for most of the pioneering work on antimagic squares.[9][10]
Bibliography
Lindon's poetry appears in the following anthologies, edited volumes, and journals:
- J. M. Cohen, ed. Yet More Comic and Curious Verse. Penguin, 1959.
- Worm Runner's Digest. 1959–.
- The Guinness Book of Poetry 1958–59. Putnam, 1960.
- Martin Gardner. The Annotated Snark. Simon & Schuster, 1962.
- Martin Gardner, ed. The Annotated Casey at the Bat: A Collection of Ballads about the Mighty Casey. Dover, 1967.
- Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics. Greenwood Periodicals et al., 1968–.
- Howard W. Bergerson. Palindromes and Anagrams. Dover, 1973.
- Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation, Oxford University Press, 1997.
References
- ↑ Eckler, Jr., A. Ross (August 2010). "Look Back!". Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics 43 (3): 228–229.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Gardner, Martin (1995). The Annotated Casey at the Bat: A Collection of Ballads about the Mighty Casey (3rd ed.). Dover. p. 154. ISBN 0-486-28598-7.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gardner, Martin (1977). Mathematical Magic Show. Penguin.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Gardner, Martin (1989). Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers …And the Return of Dr Matrix. New York: W. H. Freeman. p. 83. ISBN 0-88385-521-6.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Bergerson, Howard W. (1973). Palindromes and Anagrams. Dover. pp. 20–39, 102. ISBN 978-0486206646.
- ↑ Bishop, Yvonne M.; Fienberg, Stephen E.; Holland, Paul W. (2007). Discrete Multivariate Analysis: Theory and Applications. Springer. pp. 340–342. ISBN 978-0-387-72805-6.
- ↑ Horne, Alex (2009). Birdwatchingwatching: One Year, Two Men, Three Rules, Ten Thousand Birds. Virgin. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-753-51576-1.
- ↑ Borgmann, Dmitri A. (May 1980). "Palindromes: The Ascending Tradition". Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics 13 (2): 91–101.
- ↑ Pickover, Clifford A. (2011). The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars: An Exhibition of Surprising Structures Across Dimensions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 110. ISBN 0-691-07041-5.
- ↑ Madachy, Joseph S. (1979). Madachy's Mathematical Recreations. Dover. p. 165. ISBN 978-0486237626.