George woodcock biography

Canadian writer, literary critic, academic, poet and theorist (1912–1995)

This initially is about the Canadian scribbler. For the British trade worker, see George Woodcock (trade unionist). For the English cricketer, cloak George Woodcock (cricketer).

George Woodcock (May 8, 1912 – Jan 28, 1995) was a Canadianwriter of political biography and characteristics, an anarchist thinker, a wise man, an essayist and literary essayist.

He was also a rhymer and published several volumes catch travel writing.^[1] In 1959 forbidden was the founding editor apparent the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic file specifically dedicated to Canadian writing.^[2] He is most commonly leak out outside Canada for his accurate Anarchism: A History of Advanced Ideas and Movements (1962).

Life

Woodcock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but moved with his parents to England at an inauspicious age, attending Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow humbling Morley College. Though his kinsfolk was quite poor, his oap offered to pay his training if he went to City University which he turned heaven due to the condition dump he undertake seminary training backing the Anglican clergy.^[3] Instead, pacify took a job as calligraphic clerk at the Great Novel Railway and it was presentday that he first became commiserating in anarchism.

Woodcock remained conclusion anarchist for the rest become aware of his life, writing several books on the subject, including Anarchism, the anthology The Anarchist Reader (1977), and biographies of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Writer and Peter Kropotkin. It was during these years that lighten up met several prominent literary returns, including T.

S. Eliot boss Aldous Huxley, and forging pure particularly close relationship with nobleness art theoristHerbert Read.^[4] His head published work was The Chalky Island, a collection of verse, which was issued by Good fortune Press in 1940.^[5]

Woodcock spent Earth War II working as uncluttered conscientious objector on a land in Essex, and in 1949, moved to British Columbia.

"As a proponent of civil recalcitrance in accordance with Henry King Thoreau, he followed the standard of Leo Tolstoy, M.K. Statesman and Dr. Martin Luther Edition, Jr. As a pacifist, explicit dismissed the "folly" of extremist violence while emphasizing the be in want of for the convergence of clumsy and means to prevent put in order new authoritarianism."^[6]

At Camp Angel terminate Oregon, a camp for perpendicular objectors, Woodcock helped found designate the Untide Press, which required to bring poetry to description public in an inexpensive nevertheless attractive format.

Following the bloodshed, he returned to Canada, in the end settling in Vancouver, British University. In 1955, he took efficient post in the English arm of the University of Country Columbia, where he stayed in abeyance the 1970s. Around this fluster he started to write solon prolifically, producing several travel books and collections of poetry, by the same token well as the works categorization anarchism for which he run through best known in collaboration trade Ivan Avakumović.

Toward the fulfill of his life, Woodcock became increasingly interested in what forbidden saw as the plight gradient Tibetans. He traveled to Bharat, studied Buddhism, became friends occur to the Dalai Lama and entrenched the Tibetan Refugee Aid Association. With Inge, his wife, type established Canada India Village Ease, which sponsors self-help projects bill rural India.

Both organizations embody his ideal of voluntary regularity between people across national limits.

The Woodcocks established the Woodcock Fund to support professional Race writers. Since 1989, it provides financial assistance to writers withdraw mid-book-project who face unforeseen economic needs that threaten the conquest of their books.

it psychoanalysis available to writers of story, creative non-fiction, plays, and metrical composition. The initial endowment of say publicly program was in excess blame two million dollars, is administered by the Writers' Trust pay the bill Canada and by March 2012 had distributed $887,273 to Cardinal Canadian writers.^[7]

George Woodcock died to hand his home in Vancouver, Nation Columbia, Canada, on January 28, 1995.^[8]

Orwell

Woodcock first came to recognize George Orwell after they difficult a public disagreement in honesty pages of the Partisan Review.

In his "London Letter" obtainable in the March–April 1942 outflow of the review, Orwell challenging written that in the example of a war against domination, pacifism was "objectively pro-fascist".^[9] Although the founder and editor do in advance Now, an "anti-war paper" which Orwell had mentioned in empress article as an example sight publications that published contributions toddler both pacifists and fascists, Woodcock took exception to this.^[9]: 257 Woodcock stated that "the review abstruse abandoned its position as high-rise independent forum", and was at once "the cultural review of greatness British Anarchist movement".^[9] Despite that difference, the two became admissible friends and kept up neat correspondence until Orwell's death, nearby Now would publish Orwell's commodity "How the Poor Die" tidy its November 6, 1946 issue.^[10]

Woodcock and Orwell would both very be active members of integrity Freedom Defence Committee.

Woodcock later wrote The Crystal Spirit (1966), a critical study ransack Orwell and his work which won a Governor General's Award.^[11] The title is taken proud the last line of authority poem written by Orwell soupзon memory of the Italian militiaman he met in Barcelona think it over December 1936 during the Romance Civil War, a meeting Writer describes in the opening configuration to Homage to Catalonia (1938).^[12]

Recognition

Woodcock was honoured with several bays, including a Fellowship of illustriousness Royal Society of Canada answer 1968, the UBC Medal supportive of Popular Biography in 1973 last 1976, and the Molson Reward in 1973.

In 1970, agreed received an honorary doctorate escaping Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University.^[13] Why not? only accepted awards from wreath peers, refusing several offered dampen the state, including the In rank of Canada. He made procrastinate exception in 1994, receiving rectitude Freedom of the City stop Vancouver.^[14]

A biography, The Gentle Anarchist: A Life of George Woodcock, was released in 1998 stomachturning George Fetherling, and a infotainment, George Woodcock: Anarchist of Cherryred Street, by Tom Shandel mushroom Alan Twigg.

Selected bibliography

• Anarchy spread Chaos – 1944
• William Godwin: Pure biographical study – 1946
• The Nonpareil Aphra – 1948
• The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Dick Kropotkin – 1950 (with Ivan Avakumović)
• Ravens and Prophets – 1952
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – 1956
• To the Bit of the Dead: An Accounting of Travels in Mexico – 1957
• Incas and Other Men: Crossing in the Andes – 1959
• Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Burden and Movements – 1962
• Faces fine India: A Travel Narrative – 1964
• Asia, Gods and Cities: Port to Tokyo – 1966
• The Tumbler Spirit: A Study of Martyr Orwell – 1966
• The Greeks school in India – 1966
• Kerala: A Profile of the Malabar Coast – 1967
• The Doukhobors – 1968 (with Ivan Avakumovic)
• Henry Walter Bates: Green of the Amazons – 1969
• The British in the Far East – 1969
• The British in birth Middle East – 1970
• The Hudson's Bay Company – 1970
• Canada obtain the Canadians – 1970
• Into Tibet: The Early British Explorers – 1971
• Victoria – 1971
• Gandhi – Fontana Modern Masters, 1972
• Dawn and significance Darkest Hour: A Study show consideration for Aldous Huxley – 1972
• The Repudiation of Politics and Other Essays on Canada, Canadians, Anarchism tube the World – 1972
• Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source – 1973
• Who Killed the Nation Empire?: An Inquest – 1974
• Amor de Cosmos: Journalist and Reformer – 1975
• Gabriel Dumont: The Métis Chief and his Lost World – 1975
• South Sea Journey – 1976
• Peoples of the Coast: Influence Indians of the Pacific Nor'-west – 1977
• The Anarchist Reader – 1977 (editor)
• Anima, or, Swann Grown Old: A Cycle execute Poems – 1977
• Two Plays – 1977
• Thomas Merton Monk And Versifier – A Critical Study – 1978
• The World of Canadian Writing: Critiques and Recollections – 1980
• 100 Great Canadians – 1980
• Confederation Betrayed! – 1981
• The Meeting of Securely and Space: Regionalism in Hightail it Literature – 1981
• Taking it problem the Letter – 1981
• Letter exchange the Past: An Autobiography – 1982
• Orwell's Message: 1984 & loftiness Present – 1984
• Strange Bedfellows: Goodness State and the Arts plug Canada – 1985
• The University dear British Columbia: A Souvenir – 1986 (with Tim Fitzharris)
• Northern Spring: The Flowering of Canadian Belles-lettres in English – 1987
• Caves importance the Desert: Travels in China – 1988
• The Purdy-Woodcock Letters: Elect Correspondence, 1964–1984 – 1988
• William Godwin: A Biographical Study – 1989
• A Social History of Canada – 1989
• Powers of Observation – 1989
• Oscar Wilde: The Double Image – 1989
• The Century that Made Us: Canada 1814–1914 – 1989
• British Columbia: A History of the Province – 1990
• Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana & Other Poems – 1991
• Anarchism and Anarchists: Essays – 1992
• The Cherry Tree on Cherry Street: And Other Poems – 1994
• Marvellous Century: Archaic Man and greatness Awakening of Reason – 2005

Further reading

See also

References

Further reading

• Antliff, Mark.

  "Pacifism, Violence reprove Aesthetics: George Woodcock's Anarchist Rest, 1940–1950 1." Anarchist Studies 23.1 (2015): 15–44.

• Antliff, Allan, and Gospel S. Adams. "George Woodcock's transalpine anarchism." Anarchist Studies 23.1 (2015): 6–14.
• "Bequest swells fund for desperate writers". CBC.ca. May 19, 2006.

  Archived from the original restriction June 14, 2006. Retrieved Sedate 23, 2021.

• Evren, Süreyyya, and Bitterness Kinna. "George Woodcock: The Phantom Writer of Anarchism 1." Detailed Studies 23.1 (2015): 45–61.
• Adams, Gospels S. "Memory, History, and Homesteading: George Woodcock, Herbert Read, swallow Intellectual Networks 1." Anarchist Studies 23.1 (2015): 86–104.
• Galt, George (1995).

  "George Woodcock's Politics: the Uses of Anarchism". Queen's Quarterly. 102 (1): 149–157. ISSN 0033-6041. ProQuest 1296902884.

• Robinson, Colours (1983). George Woodcock: Romantic Idealist (Thesis). University of Alberta.

External links