Wilfrid Ewart, 1892-1922

World War I novelist and essayist Wilfrid Herbert Gore Ewart (1892-1922) was born on May 19, 1892. His father, Herbert Brisbane Ewart, came from a noted military family and served as comptroller to the widow of a Russian nobleman. His mother, Lady Mary "Molly" Ewart, was of aristocratic birth, the youngest daughter of the third Earl of Arran. Despite growing up in the fashionable neighborhood of Belgravia in London, Ewart did not have an easy childhood. He was blind in one eye and had poor eyesight in the other. Moreover, though his father was supportive, his mother would at times fly into rages. For this reason, Ewart and his younger sisters, Angela and Betty, were often sent to stay at the home of their mother's cousin in Buckinghamshire. At nine, Ewart was sent to St. Aubyn's boarding school in Rottingdean, Sussex. There, he grew introverted and acutely sensitive to criticism. He was next educated by a private tutor in Bournemouth before, at the age of fourteen, going to learn of agriculture at a Bottisham farm in the Cambridge fens.

At Bottisham, Ewart began to write about the English rural life around him and developed a love for the writings of Thomas Hardy. While still in his teens, he became one of the country's leading experts on hens. He collaborated with John Stephen Hicks on a book titled (1909), based on his previously serialized articles for . He also began writing satirical pieces about the London society and manners he encountered on his visits back to the city.

Despite his bad eyesight and general poor health, Ewart joined the army in the summer of 1914. He obtained a commission, serving as a captain in the Scots Guards. During his wartime service, Ewart met writer Stephen Graham, then a soldier in Ewart's battalion. As an officer, Ewart would have not typically associated with Graham, a conscript who was ten years his senior. But, the two bonded over their mutual interest in literature and writing since, as Graham would recall, the Scots Guards was "not a literary regiment." During the war, Ewart wrote articles, sometimes pseudonymously, about the Scots Guards and combat. After the war, he published a novel, (1921), which drew on his wartime experiences. became a bestseller and was highly praised even at a time when readers were becoming weary of war memoirs and novels.

In 1921, Ewart travelled through Ireland, penning articles for the about the civil strife between the British and Irish nationalist forces. He then gathered and expanded these pieces for the volume (1922). He also continued writing reviews and articles for periodicals and newspapers. In April of 1922, Ewart suffered a mental and physical collapse, which included the partial paralysis of his fingers. Historian Hugh Cecil suggests that Ewart's always fragile psychology might have been further unbalanced by a combination of the aftereffects of the war, his immersion in the London literary scene, overwork, and personal disappointments. At the urging of Stephen Graham and his wife, Ewart set out to visit the couple and recover with them in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ewart embarked for the United States in September of 1922. He took with him notes for the history of the Scots Guards during the First World War that he was composing. In New Mexico, Ewart recovered the use of his fingers and began to write again. Though he had planned to spend the Christmas holidays in New Orleans, at the last minute he decided to delay his visit to Louisiana and travel to Mexico first. It was in Mexico City that, having survived the First World War, Ewart met his tragic early death. Near midnight on December 31, 1922, Ewart stepped out onto his hotel balcony to observe the New Year's festivities. He was killed by a stray bullet fired by a reveler celebrating below.

In spite of his death, Wilfrid Ewart's literary career continued. In 1924, Stephen Graham commemorated his friend and fellow writer in his volume (1924). Ewart's own opening chapters on the Scots Guards were gathered alongside material by F. Loraine Petre and Major-General Cecil Lowther in a volume titled (1925). In the early 1930s, John Gawsworth (the pen name of Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong) began editing and publishing posthumous volumes of Ewart's writing, first (1933) and then (1934), an autobiographical account of Ewart's war and post-war years based on Ewart's letters to his family and published articles. These were followed by two additional posthumous volumes, (1936), a novel Ewart had written before , and (1937), a collection of Ewart's essays on English rural life.

John Gawsworth, 1912-1970

British editor, anthologist, and poet John Gawsworth (1912-1970) was a bohemian and bibliophile who worked assiduously to revive the reputations of writers he felt were unduly neglected. Gawsworth was born Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong on June 29, 1912. His parents, Frederick Percy and Ethel Jackson Armstrong, were divorced when Gawsworth was still a child, and he was raised in London where he attended Merchant Taylors' School.

Following his graduation in 1928, Armstrong began working at the bookstore of Andrew Block in the Soho region of London. Gawsworth was zealous about collecting books and manuscripts and soon met several writers through his various positions in the book trade. He fashioned himself as a "Man of Letters," adopting the nom-de-plume "John Gawsworth." He also wrote and published poetry, including his early volumes (1931) and (1931). In 1929, he began corresponding with and eventually met writer Arthur Machen, about whom he wrote an unpublished biography. He next focused his attention on the horror and fantasy writer, M. P. Shiel, who was a friend of Machen's and whose reputation was then similarly in decline. When Shiel died in 1947, he bequeathed to Gawsworth the title of "King Juan I of Redonda." Shiel's father had staked a claim on the miniature Caribbean island and had fancifully crowned his son king. In this manner, the already multiply-named Gawsworth received another moniker, the King of Redonda.

In the early 1930s, Gawsworth began publishing horror, mystery, and fantasy anthologies, such as (1932), (1933) and (1934), which contained stories by Machen, Shiel, and others. The Gawsworth-edited anthology (1936) is notable for being one of the earliest book appearances by writer Lawrence Durrell. Gawsworth's efforts on behalf of fantasy, mystery, and horror writing helped draw renewed attention to this genre.

In his editing, Gawsworth would at times undertake collaborations, revising and completing story fragments by authors such as E. H. Visiak, M. P. Shiel, and Edgar Jepson. During the 1930s, Gawsworth edited four posthumous volumes of Wilfrid Ewart's writing: (1933), (1934), (1936), and (1937). Gawsworth's editing of Ewart's work entailed revising previously published essays, and even, in the case of , drawing on Ewart's correspondence to produce a first person episodic narrative. Gawsworth also edited volumes of writing by M. P. Shiel, Theodore Wratislaw, E. H. W. Meyerstein, and others.

In the late 1930s, Gawsworth began receiving recognition for his literary and editorial efforts. He became first a member in 1933 and then a Fellow in 1938 of the Royal Society of Literature, before winning its Benson Silver Medal in 1939.

Gawsworth founded in 1939 and served as its editor until 1941. Following his service in both the Royal Army and the Royal Air Force during World War II, he resumed his work on periodicals. He edited , a journal of parapsychology and philosophy, , and, most notably, from 1949 to 1952, . The late 1940s also saw the publication of (1948), a high point in his poetic career.

Gawsworth's personal life took a difficult turn in the late 1940s. In 1948, he divorced his first wife Barbara Kentish, whom he had married in 1933. He subsequently entered into unsuccessful marriages with Estelle Gilardeau and Doreen Emily Ada (Rowley) Downie, whom he called "Anna." This time period also saw a decline in his literary reputation and his health (he was diabetic and a heavy drinker). By 1969, with little money, he was living an itinerant lifestyle, staying with friends when he could, traveling some, and passing in and out of hospitals. In July of 1970, he was honored in a BBC tribute hosted by Lawrence Durrell, but died soon after of a pulmonary embolism at the Brompton Hospital in London on September 23, 1970.