D. B. Wyndham-Lewis
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(Dominic) Bevan Wyndham-Lewis FRSL (March 9, 1891–November 21, 1969) was a British writer best known for his humorous contributions to newspapers and for controversial biographies. His family were originally from Wales, but he was born in Liverpool and brought up in Cardiff. He served in the Welch Regiment during the First World War, and afterwards joined the Daily Express where he was briefly Literary Editor.
In 1919 he was put in charge of the paper's humorous 'By the Way' column and adopted the pen name Beachcomber. However he was not happy confining his contribution to humour, and gave up the column to the better-known J. B. Morton. Morton acknowledged Wyndham-Lewis' contribution by dedicating his first anthology of columns to him. Wyndham-Lewis lived in Paris from the mid 1920s while doing historical research (although he contributed a column called 'At the Sign of the Blue Moon' to the Daily Mail which his followers regard as his most outstanding body of humourous work).
In 1928 Wyndham-Lewis wrote a biography of François Villon, a roguish poet from the 15th century, which seemed designed to be an entertaining read. Later biographies of French Kings Louis XI and Charles V were found by academic reviewers to have a distinct bias towards being propaganda on behalf of their subjects, although it was generally accepted that Wyndham-Lewis wrote with a verve rarely found in biographies of this sort of subject. However, perhaps his best known work nowadays is a book he didn't in fact write at all: "The Stuffed Owl" which he co-edited with Charles Lee. This anthology of 'bad verse' is justly famous as being one of the funniest of all poetry collections, featuring Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe and many others at considerably less than their best.
Wyndham-Lewis had converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1921. Later in the 1930s after returning to Britain Wyndham-Lewis turned to humorous anthologies and in 1954 he collaborated with Ronald Searle on The Terror of St Trinian's (under the pen-name Timothy Shy). Later work also included biographies of James Boswell, Pierre de Ronsard, Molière and Miguel de Cervantes.
Published works
- On straw, and other conceits (1927)
- François Villon: a documented survey (Davies, London, 1928)
- A Christmas book : an anthology for moderns (with G. C. Heseltine) (Dent, New York, 1928)
- King Spider: some aspects of Louis XI of France and his companions (Heinemann, London, 1930)
- Emperor of the West : a study of Charles the Fifth (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1932)
- I couldn't help laughing!: an anthology of war-time humour (Lindsay Drummond, London, 1942)
- Ronsard (Sheed and Ward, London, 1944)
- The hooded hawk: or, The case of Mr. Boswell (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1946)
- Four favourites (Evans, London, 1948)
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