Paul Potts (writer)
Paul Hugh Howard Potts (19 July 1911 – 26 August 1990), a British-born poet of Canadian extraction,[1] was the author of Dante Called You Beatrice (1960), a memoir of unrequited love.[2]
Born in Datchet, Berkshire[3] to a Canadian father and an Irish mother, Potts was educated in Canada, England and Italy, but from the early 1930s he lived in London. He frequented the Soho-Fitzrovia area where he would sell broadsheet copies of his poetry in the streets and pubs.[4][5]
Among Potts's literary friends were George Orwell and the English poet George Barker.[6][7] Potts's memoir of Orwell, "Don Quixote on a Bicycle", appeared in The London Magazine in 1957,[8][9] and his 1948 essay “The World of George Barker” appeared in Poetry Quarterly.[10]
Bibliography
(1940) A Poet's Testament, with drawings by Cliff Bayliss and Scott MacGregor, foreword by Hugh MacDiarmid
(1944) Instead of a Sonnet (enlarged 1978)
(1960) Dante Called You Beatrice
(1970) To Keep A Promise
(1973) Invitation to a Sacrament
(2006) Ronald Caplan (ed.), George Orwell's Friend: Selected Writings by Paul Potts
See also
Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (1969)
Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse (1953)
New Lyrical Ballads (1945)
Notes and references
- ^ Potts is often called a Canadian, for example by Ronald Caplan in George Orwell's Friend which has him "born in British Columbia", but other sources - including the Times obituary - give his birthplace as Datchet in the UK.
- ^ Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960
- ^ Datchet was at that time in Buckinghamshire
- ^ "Paul Potts - Obituary", The Times, London, 29 August 1990
- ^ Peter Stothard, "Soho, ring-marked and a little soiled", TLS blog, 2 March 2008, retrieved 7 February 2013
- ^ Taylor, D. J., Orwell: The Life, Henry Holt and Company, 2003, passim
- ^ Meyers, Jeffrey (ed.), Introduction to George Orwell, Routledge, 1975, p.20
- ^ Rodden, John, George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation, Oxford University Press, 1989, rev. 2002, pp 128-129
- ^ Rodden, John, The Unexamined Orwell, University of Texas Press, 2011, p.222
- ^ Warren, Richard, "Paul Potts on ‘The World of George Barker’", nd, blog post; retrieved 12 February 2013
Further reading
Latona, Robert, "Happily Never After, or, The Rubbish Tower", New Partisan.
"Guide to the Paul Potts Papers", NorthWestern University Library, Evanston, IL
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