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Basil Davenport

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Basil Davenport (1905-1966) was a literary critic, United States academic, anthologist, author of science fiction novels,[1] and other genres. He was one of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1905, the son of Ira William Davenport and Emily Andrews Davison. He died on April 7, 1966, in New York County, New York, at the age of 61.

Biography

Basil Davenport enlisted in the U. S. Army on March 5, 1943, in New York, during World War II when he was 37 years old.[2] The Beineke Library at Yale University has an archive of his papers.[3]

He had one brother, John A. Davenport.

Introductory essays

He frequently wrote introductions to works by other authors, such as The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Twenty Years After the Mast by Alexandre Dumas, and The House of the Seven Gables[4] by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote a sixty-page introduction to the Utopian novel Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright.[5]

Editor of anthologies

His edited books include The Portable Roman Reader[6] and in 1955 a short critical study, Inquiry into Science Fiction.[7][8]

Science fiction

Davenport described himself as a lifelong fan of science fiction.[9] His science fiction works included Tales to Be Told in the Dark[10] He was a member of the Hydra Club, a group of sci-fi professionals and their acquaintances who met in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.

New York Times and Saturday Review book critic

For Saturday Review Davenport reviewed James Branch Cabell's novel, Hamlet Had An Uncle, and called Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919), Cabell's previous and best-known novel, "a masterpiece."[11] In 1950 he reviewed The Moon is Hell, a collection of science fiction stories by John W. Campbell, Jr. For the NYT he was one of two of the newspaper's staff critics to review Arthur C. Clarke's's most famous book 2001: A Space Odyssey favorably.[12]

References

  1. ^ "SF Basil Davenport". SF Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  2. ^ United States National Archives and Records Administration (2005). U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc.
  3. ^ "Collection: Basil Davenport papers | Archives at Yale". archives.yale.edu. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  4. ^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (2005). The house of the seven gables. Introduction by Basil Davenport. Doylestown, PA: Wildside Press. ISBN 1-55742-302-4.
  5. ^ "Authors : Davenport, Basil : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia". www.sf-encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  6. ^ Davenport, Basil, ed. (1979). The Portable Roman reader (Reprinted ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-015056-0.
  7. ^ Science Fiction Encyclopedia. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/davenport_basil#sthash.iU6O9hyF
  8. ^ Science Fiction Encyclopedia. http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/davenport_basil
  9. ^ "F&SF house advertisement". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. October 1959. pp. Back cover.
  10. ^ Davenport, Basil (1960). Tales to Be Told in the Dark. Ballantine. ASIN B0052CQZM8.
  11. ^ "In the Lineage of Jurgen" by Basil Davenport (Review of Hamlet Had an Uncle, by James Branch Cabell) The Saturday Review, January 27, 1940, p. 11
  12. ^ "Realm of the Spacemen", The New York Times, October 7, 1951
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