Robert Wilson Lynd
Robert Wilson Lynd (
1879 -
1949) was a British writer, an urbane literary
essayist and strong
Irish nationalist.
He was born and educated in
Belfast, studying at
Queen's University. His background was
Protestant, his father being a
Presbyterian Church Moderator.
He began as a journalist on
The Northern Whig in
Belfast. He moved to
London in 1901, via
Manchester, sharing accommodation with his friend the artist
Paul Henry. Firstly he wrote drama criticism, for
Today, edited by
Jerome K. Jerome. He also wrote for the
Daily News.
He settled in
Hampstead, in
Keats Grove next to the
John Keats house. The Lynds were well known as literary hosts, in the group including
J. B. Priestley. They were on good terms also with
Hugh Walpole; Priestley, Walpole and Sylvia Lynd were founding committee members of the Book Society. Irish guests included
James Joyce and
James Stephens. On one occasion reported by
Victor Gollancz, Joyce intoned
Anna Livia Plurabelle to his own piano accompaniment.
He used the
pseudonym Y.Y. (Ys, or
wise, you see) in writing for the
New Statesman. According to C. H. Rolph's
Kingsley (1973), Lynd's weekly essay, which ran from 1913 to 1945, was 'irreplaceable'. In 1941 editor
Kingsley Martin decided to alternate it with pieces by
James Bridie on Ireland, but the experiment was not at all a success. Lynd died in 1949 and is buried in
Belfast City Cemetery.
He became a fluent Irish speaker, and
Gaelic League member. As a
Sinn Féin activist, he used the name
Robiard Ã" Flionn/Roibeard Ua Flionn.
He wrote for
The Republic in its early days. He spoke at the funeral in 1916 of
Irish Republican and
Marxist James Connolly, whose works
Labour in Ireland,
Labour in Irish History and
The Re-Conquest of Ireland he subsequently edited. He was also a loyal friend of
Roger Casement.
He married the writer
Sylvia Dryhurst, whom he met at Gaelic League meetings in London, in 1909. Their daughters Máire and Sigle became close friends of
Isaiah Berlin. Sigle's son, born in 1941, is the artist Tim Wheeler [
1].
Irish and English (1908)
Home Life in Ireland (1909)
Rambles in Ireland (1912)
The Book of This and That (1915)
If the Germans Conquered England (1917)
Old and New Masters (1919)
Ireland a Nation (1919)
The Art of Letters (1920)
The Passion of Labour (1920)
New Statesman articles
The Pleasures of Ignorance (1921)
Solomon in All His Glory (1922)
The Sporting Life and Other Trifles (1922)
Books and Authors (1922)
The Blue Lion (1923)
Selected Essays (1923)
The Peal of Bells (1924)
The Money Box (1925)
The Orange Tree (1926)
The Little Angel (1926)
Dr. Johnson and Company (1927)
The Goldfish (1927)
The Silver Books of English Sonnets (1927) editor
The Green Man (1928)
It's a Fine World (1930)
Rain, Rain, go to Spain (1931)
Great Love Stories of All Nations (1932) editor
"Y.Y." An Anthology of Essays (1933)
The Cockleshell (1933)
Both Sides of the Road (1934)
I Tremble to Think (1936)
In Defence of Pink (1937)
Searchlights and Nightingales (1939)
An Anthology of Modern Poetry (1939) editor
Life's Little Oddities (1941) illustrated by Steven Spurrier
Further Essays of Robert Lynd (1942)
Things One Hears (1945) illustrated by Claire Oldham
Essays on Life and Literature (1951)
Books and Writers (1952)
Essays by Robert Lynd (1959)
Galway of the Races - Selected essays (1990) edited by
Sean McMahonLynd was a long-serving literary editor at the
News Chronicle. Himself a minor poet, and married to
Sylvia Lynd who was widely published, his sympathies as shown in this selection were most largely with figures from the
Irish literary revival, and the
Georgian poets. The book was published by
Methuen, who had produced a sequence of anthologies in the 1920s and 1930s; Lynd had introduced the very popular1924 selection by
Algernon Methuen himself, called
An Anthology of Modern Verse. Subsequently the firm had produced an anthology edited jointly by
Cecil Day-Lewis and
L. A. G. Strong. Poets included in Lynd's book were:
Lascelles Abercrombie -
Martin Armstrong -
W. H. Auden -
Maurice Baring -
Hilaire Belloc -
Laurence Binyon -
Edmund Blunden -
Gordon Bottomley -
Lilian Bowes Lyon -
Robert Bridges -
Rupert Brooke -
Joseph Campbell -
Roy Campbell -
G. K. Chesterton -
Richard Church -
Austin Clarke -
Padraic Colum -
Frances Cornford -
Margaret Cropper -
Charles Dalmon -
W. H. Davies -
Edward Davison -
C. Day Lewis -
Walter de la Mare -
Lord Alfred Douglas -
John Drinkwater -
Clifford Dyment -
A. E. -
T. S. Eliot -
James Elroy Flecker -
Viola Garvin -
Monk Gibbon -
Stella Gibbons -
W. W. Gibson -
Oliver Gogarty -
Louis Golding -
Gerald Gould -
Bryan Guinness -
George Rostrevor Hamilton -
Thomas Hardy -
Christopher Hassall -
F. R. Higgins -
Ralph Hodgson -
Gerard Manley Hopkins -
A. E. Housman -
Aldous Huxley -
Douglas Hyde -
James Joyce -
Frank Kendon -
T. M. Kettle -
Rudyard Kipling -
D. H. Lawrence -
Francis Ledwidge -
Eiluned Lewis -
F. L. Lucas -
Sylvia Lynd -
Thomas MacDonagh -
Louis Macneice -
John Masefield -
Charlotte Mew -
Alice Meynell -
Alice Milligan -
Harold Monro -
T. Sturge Moore -
Sir Henry Newbolt -
Robert Nichols -
Alfred Noyes -
Frank O'Connor -
Moira O'Neill -
Seumas O'Sullivan -
Wilfred Owen -
Herbert Palmer -
Padraic H. Pearse -
Ruth Pitter -
Hugh Gordon Porteus -
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch -
Herbert Read -
Ernest Rhys -
Richard Rowley -
V. Sackville-West -
Siegfried Sassoon -
Edward Shanks -
Fredegond Shove -
Edith Sitwell -
Stanley Snaith -
Charles H. Sorley -
Stephen Spender -
Sir John Squire -
William Force Stead -
James Stephens -
L. A. G. Strong -
Dylan Thomas -
Edward Thomas -
Edward Thompson -
Herbert Trench -
W. J. Turner -
Katharine Tynan -
Sir William Watson -
Dorothy Wellesley -
Evelyn Underhill -
Sir Robert Vansittart -
Sylvia Townsend Warner -
Charles Williams -
Humbert Wolfe -
W. B. Yeats -
Andrew Young -
Francis Brett Young*
List of Northern Ireland writers*
About the Blue Plaque*
Contemporary Review article*
Free ebook of Robert Lynd at
Project Gutenberg
