Introduction

The Adventures of a Manuscript and Background with Chorus: the titles of these two volumes by Frank Swinnerton, both published in 1956, could serve as apt summaries of his life and works. Despite a very unpromising start in life, Swinnerton’s entire career, from his earliest days as an office boy in a newspaper office to the heights of publishing success at the thriving heart of London’s print-culture world and various social hubs, was defined by the material evolution of manuscripts, from draft form to post-publication appreciation. Posterity, however, has him firmly relegated to the margins – yet another figure in the background of Modernist, inter-war and post-war literature, whose voice is at most part of a chorus of secondary, partly forgotten voices.

Books were part of his life from the very beginning. He was the son of a copperplate engraver and a designer and printer, whose health during childhood was so precarious that he was hardly expected to survive, and as a result he received little formal education. Reading and writing stories of his own thus became the focus of his young life. Apprenticed to a print shop at the age of fourteen, his first decisive step towards the life to come was taking a position as a clerk at publishing house Dent’s. His meticulous calligraphy and poised attention to page layout was soon picked up on, as were his perceptive insights as a reader. From page layout and office organisation he moved into manuscript assessment as a publisher’s reader and proved his reliability by backing works by as yet little-known new authors – such as Daisy Ashford, Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey – who were soon best-sellers.

Meanwhile, he branched into reviewing and literary journalism, while also publishing novels of his own, his 1917 novel Nocturne establishing his reputation for poised, exquisitely balanced yet warm, gently readable prose, that a broad readership loved. He was also a cherished friend of nearly all the key literary figures in early to mid-century Britain, such were his talents for listening attentively to all, writing insightfully about fellow writers’ works and so enhancing their public reception, and giving offence to none.