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Herbert Read
‐
Critic of literature and the arts
Other names
Sir Herbert Edward Read
Place of birth
Place of death
Stonegrave House, Yorkshire
About
Herbert Read was born on 4 December 1893 at Muscoates Grange Farm in Yorkshire. In 1912 he studied law and economics at Leeds University. From 1915 he served in the army and was promoted to captain by the end of the First World War. After the war he became a convinced pacifist.
While on leave in London during the war, he came into contact with key figures of London’s literary and artistic circles such as T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. After 1918 he continued his career as a poet and literary critic. From 1923 he contributed regularly to T. S. Eliot’s journal, The Criterion. He published with Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press and became literary advisor to Heinemann and Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1937.
In the 1930s Read befriended Mulk Raj Anand and, according to Anand’s Conversations in Bloomsbury (1981), the two of them met with Eric Gill and Stanley Morrison to talk about art. Anand describes Read thus: ‘strikingly tall, with tousled hair, sallow face, mongoloid high cheekbones, and soft shy eyes’ (p. 112).
Read also befriended M. J. Tambimuttu, the founder-editor of Poetry London. Read contributed to the first edition of Poetry London (1939), Tambimuttu’s Poetry in Wartime (1942) and to the Festschrift for Marianne Moore’s Seventy-Seventh Birthday (1964), edited by Tambimuttu.
By the 1950s and 1960s Read had established himself as a renowned critic on literature and the arts, his reputation resting on several major works. He died on 12 June 1968.
Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Bonamy Dobree, T. S. Eliot (met in 1917; Read often contributed to Criterion), Roger Fry, Robert Graves, Wyndham Lewis, Henry Moore, George Orwell, Ezra Pound, Edith Sitwell, M. J. Tambimuttu (published in Poetry London), Dylan Thomas, Stephen Spender, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf.
Selected Works:
Art and Alienation: The Role of the Artist in Society (London: Thames & Hudson, [1907])
Songs of Chaos (London: Elkin Mathews, 1915)
Eclogues: A Book of Poems (Westminster: Cyril W. Beaumont, 1919)
Naked Warriors (London: Art & Letters, 1919)
Mutations of the Phoenix (Richmond: L. & V. Woolf, 1923)
In Retreat (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925)
English Prose Style (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1928)
Phases of English Poetry (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1928)
The Sense of Glory: Essays in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929)
Ambush (London: Faber & Faber, 1930)
(with Bonamy Dobree) The London Book of English Prose (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1931)
The Meaning of Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1931)
The Place of Art in a University (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1931)
Form in Modern Poetry (London: Sheed & Ward, 1932)
Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)
The Innocent Eye (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)
Art and Industry (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)
Henry Moore, Sculptor: An Appreciation (London: A. Zwemmer, 1934)
Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture (London: Cassell, 1934)
Essential Communism (London: Stanley Nott, 1935)
Art and Society (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)
Surrealism (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)
Annals of Innocence and Experience (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)
English Master Painters (London: Kegan Paul, 1940)
The Philosophy of Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1940)
Education Through Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)
The Politics of the Unpolitical (London: Routledge, 1943)
The Education of Free Men (London: Freedom Press, 1944)
A World Within a War: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1944)
The Grass Roots of Art (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1947)
Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism (n.p., 1949)
(with Bonamy Dobree) The London Book of English Verse (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949)
Education for Peace (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950)
Art and the Evolution of Man (London: Freedom Press, 1951)
Byron (London: Longmans, 1951)
The True Voice of Feeling (London: Faber & Faber, 1953)
Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness (London: Faber & Faber, 1955)
The Art of Sculpture (London: Faber & Faber, 1956)
(with Edward Dahlberg) Truth is More Sacred (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961)
The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies (London: Faber & Faber, 1963)
Eric Gill: An Essay (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Oriole Press, 1963)
Henry Moore: A Study of His Life and Work (London: Thames & Hudson, 1965)
The Origins of Form in Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1965)
The Redemption of the Robot; My Encounter with Education Through Art (New York: Trident Press, 1966)
The Cult of Sincerity (London: Faber, 1968)
Anand, Mulk Raj, Conversations in Bloomsbury (London: Wildwood House, 1981)
Berry, Francis, Herbert Read (London: Longmans, 1953)
Bluemel, Kristin, George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
City of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, A Tribute to Herbert Read, 1893–1968: An Exhibition in Conjunction with the 1975 Ilkley Literature Festival, The Manor House, Ilkley, 25 May–22 June 1975 (Bradford: Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, 1975)
Harrod, Tanya, 'Read, Sir Herbert Edward (1893–1968)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35695]
King, James, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990)
Kinross, Robin, 'Herbert Read's Art and History: A History', Journal of Design History 1 (1980), pp. 35–50
Paraskos, Michael, Reading Read: New Views on Herbert Read (London: Freedom Press, 2007)
Read, Benedict and Thistlewood, David, Herbert Read: A British Vision of World Art (Leeds: Leeds City Art Galleries in Association with the Henry Moore Foundation and Lund Humphries, London, 1993)
Skelton, Robin, Herbert Read: A Memorial Symposium (London: Methuen, 1970)
Thistlewood, David, Herbert Read: Formlessness and Form: An Introduction to His Aesthetics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984)
Varadachari, C. D., The Literary Criticism of Sir Herbert Read (Tirupati: Sri Venkateswara University, 1990)
Woodcock, George, Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source (London: Faber, 1972)
Letters to Naum Gabo and his wife, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Performance recordings, National Sound Archive, British Library
Correspondence with Monty Belgion, Churchill College, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge
Correspondence with James Hanley, Liverpool Record Office and Local Studies Service
Correspondence with Lord Russell and Lady Russell, William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
Correspondence and literary papers, Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives
Correspondence with Lord Clark, Margaret Nash, Lady Norton and relating to Unit One, Tate Collection, London
Letters to George Bell & Sons, University of Reading Library
Correspondence and papers, University of Toronto
University of Victoria, British Columbia
Letters to E. Finlay, Victoria and Albert Museum National Art Library, London
Image credit
Herbert Read by Howard Coster, half-plate film negative, 1934, NPG x19532
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
