William Plomer
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William Charles Franklyn Plomer (he pronounced the surname as ploomer) (1903 - 1973) was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom. Plomer was Ian Fleming's editor on several of his James Bond novels of the 1950s and 60s.
He became famous in South Africa with his first novel Turbott Wolfe which had inter-racial love and marriage as a theme. He was co-editor of the short-lived literary magazine Voorslag ("Whiplash") with two other South African rebels Roy Campbell and Laurens van der Post; it promoted a racially equal South Africa.
He spent a period in Japan in the late 1920s, where he was friendly with Sherard Vines. There, according to biographers, he was in a homosexual relationship with a Japanese man. He was never openly homosexual, during his whole lifetime, at most alluding to the subject.
He then moved to England and, through his friendship with his publisher Virginia Woolf, entered the London literary circles there. He became an important literary editor, for Faber and Faber. He was active as a librettist, with Gloriana, Curlew River and The Prodigal Son for Benjamin Britten.
Bibliography
- 1925. Turbott Wolfe (novel)
- 1927. Notes for Poems (poetry)
- 1927. I Speak of Africa (short stories)
- 1929. The Family Tree (poetry)
- 1929. Paper Houses (short stories)
- 1931. Sado (novel)
- 1932. The Case is Altered (novel)
- 1932. The Fivefold Screen (poetry)
- 1933. The Child of Queen Victoria (short stories)
- 1933. Cecil Rhodes (biography)
- 1934. The Invaders (novel)
- 1936. Visiting the Caves (poetry)
- 1936. Ali the Lion (biography, reissued in 1970 as The Diamond of Janina)
- 1938. Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert (1870-1879)
- 1940. Selected Poems (poetry)
- 1942. In a Bombed House, 1941: Elegy in Memory of Anthony Butts (poetry)
- 1943. Double Lives (memoir)
- 1945. The Dorking Thigh and Other Satires (poetry)
- 1949. Four Countries (short stories)
- 1952. Museum Pieces (novel)
- 1955. A Shot in the Park (poetry, published in U.S. as Borderline Ballads)
- 1958. At Home (memoir)
- 1960. Collected Poems (poetry)
- 1960. A Choice of Ballads (poetry)
- 1966. Taste and Remembe (poetry)
- 1975. The Autobiography of William Plomer (revision of Double Lives and At Home)
- 1978. Electric Delights (ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)(previously uncollected pieces)
References
- Peter F. Alexander. William Plomer: A Biography (Oxford Lives, 1991)
External links
- [Picture of Plomer] from the National Portrait Gallery.
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