Sunday, January 20, 2008

Happy birthday, Richard Le Gallienne.

Writer-poet Richard Le Gallienne was born today in Liverpool in 1866 and died in 1947. The father of legendary actress Eva Le Gallienne, he had a substantial literary career starting in the Mauve Decade and eventually produced some 40 volumes of poetry, nonfiction works, and novels. A reader for the Bodley Head and a good friend of mystery author Grant Allen, he also was a critic, writing for newspapers such as the London Star, the New York Sun, and the New York Times. According to Richard Whittington-Egan in the August 2003 Contemporary Review, Le Gallienne, living in France in considerable difficulty during World War II, was offered various incentives to broadcast for the Germans but he rejected their overtures.
"...to the writer life seems still more real, and how much finer, as he lives it—in the starlight of words."—Richard Le Gallienne, Attitudes and Avowals (1910) 164

No comments: