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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2024
Introduction
Robert Wilson Lynd was an Irish writer, essayist, journalist and nationalist. Born in Belfast, he studied at Queen’s University, before moving to London in 1901 to further his career as a journalist, initially writing drama criticism for Today, then edited by Jerome K. Jerome, before starting his journalistic career at the Daily News (later the News Chronicle), where he was literary editor from 1912 to 1947. In addition, his popular weekly essay for the New Statesman, using the pseudonym Y.Y. (Ys, or wise), ran from 1913 to 1945. He also contributed to the Athenaeum.
Lynd married KM’s friend, the writer Sylvia Lynd (née Dryhurst), on 21 April 1909, the pair having first met at Gaelic League meetings in London. The couple became well-known London literary hosts, in a circle that included J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole and James Joyce. Joyce and his wife, Nora Barnacle, would eventually hold their wedding lunch at the Lynds’ Hampstead house, following their marriage at Hampstead Town Hall on 4 July 1931.
The Lynds came to the attention of KM and JMM in 1915 when, in early October, their friend DHL showed them Lynd’s hostile review in the Daily News of his latest novel The Rainbow. As JMM relates, he and KM ‘had nothing to say. We neither of us liked The Rainbow, and Katherine quite definitely hated parts of it’. Lynd’s scathing review contributed to the demise of The Rainbow, for DHL was prosecuted in an obscenity trial in London on 13 November 1915, whereupon over 1,000 copies were seized and burned. It was subsequently unavailable in Britain for eleven years, although various editions remained available in the USA. In addition, the now famous anonymous review of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day, titled ‘A Tragic Comedienne’, which some critics attribute to KM herself, is also attributed by others to Robert Lynd.
[23 November 1921] [ATL]
Chalet des Sapins
Montana-sur-Sierre
Valais
23
xi
1921
Dear Mr Lynd,
Your letter was rather a relief. I thought my reviews had displeased you or that they were illegible. Very many thanks for your note. I shall type the next ones I do for you.
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