W.J. Turner

Walter J. Turner (1884-1946) in 1926. Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Walter James Redfern Turner (13 October 1884 - 18 November 1946) was an Australian-born English poet and music critic.

Life

Turner was born in South Melbourne, the eldest son of Alice May (Watson) and Walter James Turner (1857-1900), a warehouseman, church organist and ballad composer, and music teacher at the Working Men's College. Walter junior was educated at Carlton State School, Scotch College and the Working Men's College, and then worked as a clerk.

In 1907 he followed his mother to London, and worked as a clerk in an import-export business until 1913.

He spent 10 months in Germany and Austria in 1913-1914, writing satirical sketches for the New Age and concert reviews for the Musical Standard. He returned to England before the outbreak of World War I, and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery, 1916-1918.

In 1916 he published the earliest of 16 volumes of poetry. His work gained prominence when it appeared in Georgian Poetry in 1917 and 1919.

On 5 April 1918, he married Delphine Marguerite Dubuis (died 1951) at St Luke's parish church, Chelsea. The couple were childless.

After the war, Turner met and befriended a number of literary intellectuals in Bloomsbury and at Garsington, the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, including Siegfried Sassoon, Virginia Woolf, and Vita Sackville-West.

He worked as music critic for the New Statesman (1915-1940), Truth (1920-1937) and the Modern Mystic (1937). As a music critic, he distinguished himself by the independence, originality and outspokenness of his views. He published studies of Beethoven, Wagner , Berlioz, and Mozart, but also revered modern composers such as Stravinsky, and was one of London's most receptive commentators on the new music of Schönberg, Berg, Webern and Hindemith. He regarded Artur Schnabel as the greatest pianist of the age, and became his close friend.

He also worked as literary editor of the Owl (1919) and the Daily Herald (1920-1923); and drama critic for the London Mercury (1919-1923) and the New Statesman (1928-1929).

In 1922 he withdrew from the last Georgian Poetry anthology. and experimented with modernist poetry in The Seven Days of the Sun, 1925.

In his later years Turner continued a prolific and varied literary output, writing poetry, short stories, criticism, and drama, and editing a number of volumes on English culture. In the late 1930's he collaborated with William Butler Yeats in British Broadcasting Corporation poetry programs. He was literary editor of The Spectator from 1942 to 1946.

He died prematurely from a cerebral hemmorhage, at his home in Hammersmith, on 18 November 1946.

Writing

Australian Dictionary of Biography: "While committed to rhythm, music, sensibility and imagination, Turner's poetry also pursues his metaphysical interests and reveals a philosophic idealism that relates closely to Platonism and the thought of Kierkegaard."

Recognition

W.B. Yeats had the highest praise for Turner's poetry, saying that it left him "lost in admiration and astonishment", and including some of it in his Oxford Book of Modern Poetry.

Publications

 

Poetry

• The Hunter, and other poems. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1916.
• The Dark Fire. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918.
• The Dark Wind (includes The Hunter, and other poems & The Dark Fire). New York: Dutton, 1920.
• In Time Like Glass. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1921.
• Paris and Helen. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1921.
• Landscape of Cytherea: Record of a journey into a strange country. London: Chatto & Windus, 1923.
• The Seven Days of the Sun: A dramatic poem. Lonon: Chatto & Windus, 1925.
• Marigold: An idyll of the sea. London: Fleuron, 1926.
• W.J, Turner. London: Ernest Benn, 1926.
• New Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1928.
• Seven Sciagraphical Poems. Plaistow, UK: privately printed, 1929.
• Miss America: Altiora in the Sierra Nevada. London: Mandrake Press, 1930; New York: Knopf, 1930.
• Pursuit of Psyche. London: Wishart, 1931.
• Jack and Jill. London: Dent, 1934.
• Songs and Incantations (includes Seven Sciagraphical Poems), London: Dent, 1936.
• Selected Poems, 1916-1936. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
• Fossils of a Future Time?. London & New York: G. Cumberledge / Oxford University Press, 1946.
• Selected Poetry (edited by Wayne McKenna). Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1989.

Plays

• The Man Who Ate the Popomack: A tragi-comedy of love in four acts. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1922; New York: Brentano's, 1923
  • revised as The Man Who Ate the Popomack: A tragi-comedy of love in two acts. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929.
• Smaragda's lover: A dramatic phantasmagoria. London: Chatto & Windus, 1924.
• Jupiter Translated (unpublished; first performed 1933)

Novels

• The Aesthetes. London: Wishart, 1927.
• Blow for Balloons: Being the first hemisphere of the history of Henry Airbubble. London: Dent, 1935.
• Henry Airbubble in Search of a Circumference to His Breath: Being the second hemisphere of the history of Henry Airbubble. London: Dent, 1936.
• The Duchess of Popocatapetl. London: Dent, 1939.

Short fiction

• Fables, Parables, and Plots: Revolutionary stories for our time. London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1943.

Non-fiction

• Music and Life (essays). London: Methuen, 1921; New York: Dutton, 1922.
• Orpheus; or, The music of the future. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner / New York : E.P. Dutton, 1926.
• Beethoven: The search for reality. London: Ernest Benn, 1927; London: Dent, 1927; New York: Doran, 1927.
• Musical Meanderings (essays). London: Methuen, 1928; New York: Dutton, 1928.
• A Trip to New York, and a poem. London: Mandrake Press, 1929.
• Music: A short history. London: A. & C. Black, 1932.
• Wagner. London: Duckworth, 1933; New York: Macmillan, 1933.
• Facing the Music: Reflections of a music critic. London: George Bell, 1933.
• Berlioz: The man and his works. London & Toronto: Dent, 1934; New York: Vienna House, 1934.
• Mozart: The man and his works. London: Gollancz, 1938; New York: Tudor, 1938; New York: Knopf, 1938.
• The English Ballet. London: Collins, 1944.
• Exmoor Village (with photos by John Hinde). London: G.G. Harrap, 1947.

Edited

• Great Names: Being an anthology of English and American literature from Chaucer to Francis Thompson. New York, L. MacVeagh / Dial Press, 1926.
• Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An anthology. London: Chatto & Windus, 1931.
• English Music. London: Penns in the Rocks Press / Collins, 1941.
• The British Commonwealth and Empire. London: Collins, 1943; New York: Hastings House, 1944.
• A Panorama of Rural England. New York: Chanticleer Press, 1944.
• Impressions of English Literature (with introduction by Kate O'Brien). London: Collins, 1944;
  • published in U.S. as Romance of English Literature. New York: Hastings House, 1944.
• The Englishman's Country (with introduction by Edmund Blunden). London: Collins, 1945.
• Nature in Britain. London: Collins, 1946;
  • published in U.S. as A Treasury of English Wildlife. New York: Chanticleer Press, 1946.
• Aspects of British Art (with introduction by Michael Ayrton). London: Collins, 1947.
• British Adventure. London: Collins, 1947.
• British Craftsmanship (with introduction by W.B. Honey). London: Collins, 1948.

W. J. Turner "Romance" - " Chimborazo, Cotopaxi" Poem animation

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

• Wayne McKenna, W.J. Turner: Poet And music critic. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-86140-302-9

External links

Poems

• "Romance" at the Poetry Atlas
• "The Princess" at the Poetry Archive
• "Le Sacre du Printemps"
• "The Ape"
• Walter James Turner at AllPoetry (20 poems)

Prose

• "The Barrel-Organ in the Rain," New Statesman

Books

• W. J. Turner at Amazon.com
• Turner, W. J. (Walter James) 1889-1946 at WorldCat
• Author: Walter J. Turner at UNZ.org

About

• Turner, W. J. (Walter James), 1889-1946 at the Social Archive
• The Late Mr. W.J. Turner obituary at The Spectator
• W.J. Turner (Walter James Redfern Turner) Biography (1889–1946) at JRank.org
• Turner, Walter James in the Australian Dictionary of Biography