General background William Somerset Maugham Richard Aldington

2. Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington was born in Hampshire and educated at Dover College and the University of London, which he left without taking any degree. Richard Aldington began his literary work in the years preceding the First World War. His first poems appeared in the years 1909-1912 and a book of verse “Images Old and New” was published in 1915. By 1916 Aldington was in the army in France, from where he returned with a bad case of shell-shock. For several years, until he recovered his health, he earned a living by translations and literary journalism. In his early poetry Aldington often opposes mythological images of Ancient Greece to unlovely pictures of life in industrial cities. The harmony and beauty of Greek art he sees as an ideal lacking in contemporary reality. The war became a major experience for the young poet. In 1919 he published a new book of poetry “Images of War”. War is shown here as a crime against life and beauty.

In later years Aldington devoted himself more to press and produced several successful novels: “Death of a Hero” (1929), “The Colonel’s Daughter” (1931), “All Men are Enemies” (1933), “Very Heaven” (1937) and some other books.

“Death of a Hero” (1929) dedicated to the so-called “lost generation” is his first and most important novel. (“Lost generation” is an expression widely used about the generation that had taken part in World War I or suffered from its effect.) Aldington’s “Death of a Hero” is regarded as one of the most powerful antiwar novels of the period. The writer shows his deep concern for the post-war “lost generation” in his collections of stories “Roads to Glory”(1930), and “Soft Answers” (1932) as well. He is also the author of several biographies. Among his last works, the best novel is “Lawrence of Arabia” (1955). Basically his art is strongly linked with the traditions of the nineteenth century critical realism.