Richard Aldington

Aldington, Richard 

Born July 8, 1892, in Hampshire, Great Britain; died July 27, 1962, at Sury-en-Vaux, Cher, France. English author.

Aldington began his literary career as a poet. From 1913 he edited the imagist journal The Egoist. His voluntary service in World War I determined the nature of his postwar writing, particularly the subject matter and emotional content of the novel Death of a Hero (1929; Russian translation, 1932), a classic literary work of the “lost generation.” Aldington continued his passionate denunciation and satirical debunking of a hypocritical society in the short-story collection Roads to Glory (1930) and in the novel All Men Are Enemies (1933; Russian translation, 1937). For Aldington’s protagonists, personal happiness and love provide an escape from the tragic situation in which the world found itself after the war. Other well-known novels are The Colonel’s Daughter (1931; Russian translation, 1935), Very Heaven (1937; Russian translation, 1938), and Seven Against Reeves (1938; Russian translation, 1968).

In 1939, Aldington emigrated to the USA. From 1946 he lived in France, where he occupied himself primarily with translations and other literary work. He is the author of biographies of a number of writers and political figures, as well as of literary and critical works (including articles, memoirs, and essays), in which he asserts the value of the classics and evaluates the complex art of modernist writers.

WORKS

Poems. New York, 1934.
Life for Life’s Sake. New York, 1940.
The Romance of Casanova. New York, 1946.
In Russian translation:
Proshchaite, vospominaniia. (Foreword by M. Urnov.) Moscow, 1961. “Otkryvat’ krasotu mira.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1963, no. 8.

REFERENCES

Urnov, M. V. Na rubezhe vekov. Moscow, 1970.
R. Oldington: Biobibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Moscow, 1965.
Snow, C. P. R. Aldington. London, 1938.
Kershaw, A. A Bibliography of the Works of R. Aldington From 1915 to 1948. London, 1950.

E. IU. GENIEVA