Arthur St. John Adcock
Arthur St. John Adcock (17 January 1864 – 9 June 1930), was an English novelist and poet, known as A. St. John Adcock or St. John Adcock. He is remembered for his discovery of the then-unknown poet W. H. Davies.
Life
Adcock was born in London. He was a Fleet Street journalist for half a century, as an assiduous freelance writer.[1] He worked initially as a lawyer, becoming full-time as a writer in 1893.[2]
The editor of The Bookman from 1908, Adcock, according to A. E. Waite who knew him, did all the work of the Bookman, nominally under its founder William Robertson Nicoll.[3]
Legacy
Adcock's papers are held by the Bodleian Library.[4]
Works
Adcock is considered one of the "Cockney school novelists" (not the earlier Cockney School poets), a group influenced by Charles Dickens and including also Henry Nevinson, Edwin Pugh, and William Pett Ridge.[5] An early trilogy of novels, begun with East End Idylls (1897), about the London slums, drew on Arthur Morrison.[6]
Adcock published:
- An Unfinished Martyrdom (1894)
- Beyond Atonement (1896)
- East End Idylls (1897)
- The Consecration Of Hetty Fleet (1898)
- In The Image Of God (1898)
- In The Wake Of The War (1900)
- Songs Of The War (1900)
- The Luck of Private Foster: A Romance of Love and War (1900)
- From a London Garden (1903)
- More Than Money (1903)
- In Fear Of Man (1904)
- London Etchings (1904)
- Admissions And Asides (1905)
- Love In London (1906)
- London From The Top Of A 'Bus (1906)
- The Shadow Show (1907)
- The World that Never Was. A London Fantasy (1908)
- Billicks (1909)
- Two to Nowhere (1911)
- A Man With A Past (1911)
- Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London (1912)
- The Booklover's London (1913)
- Modern Grub Street and other essays (1913)
- In the Firing Line (1914) editor, war reportage
- Seeing It Through [1915]
- Australasia Triumphant! With the Australians and New Zealanders in the Great War on Land And Sea (1916)
- Songs Of The World War (1916)
- The Odd Volum (1917) editor, stories
- For Remembrance. Soldier Poets who have Fallen in the War. With nineteen portraits (1918)
- The ANZAC Pilgrim's Progres: Ballads of Australia's Army (1918) Lance-Corporal Cobber, editor
- Tod MacMammon Sees His Soul (1920)
- Exit Homo (1921)
- The Divine Tragedy (1922)
- Gods of Modern Grub Street: Impressions of Contemporary Authors (1923) on Jeffrey Farnol, W. B. Maxwell, W. W. Jacobs et al.
- With The Gilt Off (1923)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: His Work and His Personality (1924) editor
- The Bookman Treasury Of Living Poets [1925) editor, and later editions
- The Prince of Wales' African Book (1926)
- City Songs (1926) editor, poetry anthology
- Wonderful London (1926/7) editor, three volumes
- The Glory that was Grub Street - Impressions of Contemporary Authors (1928)
- Collected Poems of St. John Adcock (Hodder and Stoughton, 1929)
- London Memories (1931)
- A Book of Bohemians
- Hyde Park
Family
Adcock married Marion Taylor in 1887, and they settled in Hampstead. [6] Their daughter Marion St John Webb (died 2 May 1930) was also an author.[7] Almey St. John Adcock was also a daughter.[8]
The Bookman Treasury of Living Poets (4th edition 1931)
Edited by Adcock. The poets included (not all alive in 1931) were:
Lascelles Abercrombie - J. R. Ackerley - Arthur H. Adams - Arthur St. John Adcock - Richard Aldington - William Talbot Allison - Laurence Alma-Tadema - Reginald Arkell - Martin Armstrong - Henry Baerlein - Maurice Baring - May Bateman - Clifford Bax - Hilaire Belloc - Laurence Binyon - William Blane - Edmund Blunden - Gordon Bottomley - F. Victor Branford - Robert Bridges - Thomas Burke - Charles Kennett Burrow - May Byron - Sir Hall Caine - Joseph Campbell - Roy Campbell - William Canton - Bliss Carman - G. K. Chesterton - Wilfred Rowland Childe - Richard Church - Ethel Clifford - Helena Coleman - Padraic Colum - William Leonard Courtney - Zora Cross - Gerald H. Crow - Gerald Cumberland - Charles Dalmon - William Henry Davies - Edward Davison - C. A. Dawson-Scott - Walter De la Mare - C. J. Dennis - May Doney - Charles Montagu Doughty - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - John Drinkwater - Helen Parry Eden - T. S. Eliot - Vivian Locke Ellis - Godfrey Elton - Eleanor Farjeon - Hugh I'A. Fausset - John Ferguson - Alfred Hugh Fisher - F. S. Flint - Robin Flower - S. Gertrude Ford - Gilbert Frankau - John Freeman - Cecil French - V. Helen Friedlaender - Rose Fyleman - Norman Gale - John Galsworthy - Douglas Garman - Leon Gellert - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Mary Gilmore - Hibbart Gilson - Louis Golding - Douglas Goldring - Eva Gore-Booth - Sir Edmund Gosse - Gerald Gould - Alfred Perceval Graves - Robert Graves - Rosaleen Graves - Gladys Laurence Groom - Joan Guthrie-Smith - Stephen Gwynn - Katherine Hale - Thomas Hardy - F. W. Harvey - Alfred Hayes - Ralph Hodgson - Norah Mary Holland - Alfred Edward Housman - Laurence Housman - Aldous Huxley - Violet Jacob - James Joyce - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Frank Kendon - Rudyard Kipling - Vernon Knowles - Edmund George Valpy Knox - D. H. Lawrence - Nina Frances Layard - Richard Le Gallienne - Rudolph Chambers Lehmann - Shane Leslie - W. M. Letts - Sylvia Lynd - Sidney Royse Lysaght - Rose Macaulay - Ronald Campbell Macfie - Patrick MacGill - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay - James Allan Mackereth - Rachel Swete Macnamara - John Masefield - Theodore Maynard - Phyllis Mégroz - R. L. Mégroz - Charlotte Mew - Susan Miles - Harold Monro - E. Hamilton Moore - T. Sturge Moore - Thomas Moult - Neil Munro - Charles Murray - John Middleton Murry - Sarojini Naidu - Sir Henry Newbolt - Robert Nichols - Wallace Bertram Nichols - Frederick Niven - Alfred Noyes - Will H. Ogilvie - Carola Oman - Moira O'Neill - Hermon Ould - Barry Pain - Herbert E. Palmer - Sir Gilbert Parker - Andrew Barton Paterson - Eden Phillpotts - William Plomer - Max Plowman - John Presland - Peter Quennell - Sir Arthur T. Quiller-Couch - Herbert Read - Ernest Rhys - Edgell Rickword - Cecil Roberts - Charles George Douglas Roberts - Dorothy Roberts - Richard Ellis Roberts - Eric Sutherland Robertson - George William Russell - Arthur K. Sabin - Lady Margaret Sackville - V. Sackville-West - Arthur L. Salmon - Ruth Manning-Sanders - Siegfried Sassoon - Henry Savage - Duncan Campbell Scott - Frederick George Scott - Sir Owen Seaman - Robert W. Service - William Kean Seymour - Edward Shanks - Alfred Tresidder Sheppard - Edward Shillito - Horace Shipp - Fredegond Shove - May Sinclair - Edith Sitwell - Osbert Sitwell - Sacheverell Sitwell - Francis Carey Slater - C. Fox Smith - Stephen Southwold - J. C. Squire - Robert J. C. Stead - W. Force Stead - James Stephens - Arthur John Arbuthnott Stringer - Leonard Strong - Muriel Stuart - G. A. Studdert-Kennedy - Arthur Symons - Rabindranath Tagore - Rachel Annand Taylor - Gilbert Thomas - Edward Thompson - E. Temple Thurston - W. R. Titterton - W. J. Turner - Katherine Tynan - Alberta Vickridge - Sherard Vines - E. H. Visiak - Arthur Edward Waite - C. Henry Warren - Sir William Watson - Alec Waugh - Marion St. John Webb - Mary Webb - Mary Morison Webster - Anna Wickham - Charles Williams - Iolo Aneurin Williams - Humbert Wolfe - Margaret L. Woods - David McKee Wright - W. B. Yeats - Francis Brett Young - Geoffrey Winthrop Young - Ruth Young
References
- ↑ Peter Pierce (17 September 2009). The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-521-88165-4.
- ↑ George Walter (26 October 2006). The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. Penguin Books Limited. p. 401. ISBN 978-0-14-118190-5.
- ↑ Arthur Edward Waite, Shadows of Life and Thought: A Retrospective Review in the Form of Memoirs (1992 edition0, pp. 82-3.
- ↑ "Papers of (Arthur) St. John Adcock". University of Oxford. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
- ↑ Johnson, George Malcolm. "Ridge, William Pett". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56888. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- 1 2 Sandra Kemp; Charlotte Mitchell; David Trotter (2002). The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction. Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-860534-8.
- ↑ Who was Who 1929-1940, 1941
- ↑ Lawrence Alfred Phillips (1 January 2007). A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke: Victorian and Edwardian Representations of London. Rodopi. p. 139 note 17. ISBN 90-420-2290-6.
External links
- Works by A. St. John Adcock at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Arthur St. John Adcock at Internet Archive
- Papers of (Arthur) St. John Adcock in the Special Collections at Bodleian Library, Oxford University
- Portraits of St. John Adcock in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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