Books and Writers

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Cecil Day Lewis

Male : Poet & Critic. Poet Laureate 1968-1972. Married Constance King in 1928 (divorced 1951) and Jill Balcon in 1951. Wrote detective fiction as Nicholas Blake (SEE UNDER BLAKE). Father of Daniel (actor) & Tamsin (writer & broadcaster)
Nationality : Irish Place of Birth : Ballintogher, Ireland

Date of Birth : 1904 Date of Death : 1972 Age : 68

Pseudonyms : Nicholas Blake

Other Work : Teacher at Cheltenham College 1930-5. Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1951-6)

Education : Sherborne & Wadham College, Oxford
1925-1935
Beechen Vigil & Other Poems
(1925 Fortune Press) - 1st Book
Offered for £275 in 1999
Ten Singers : An Anthology
(1925 Fortune & Merriman, London)
(Ed) Oxford Poetry 1927 (1927) - with W H Auden
Country Comets : Poems
(1928 Martin Hopkinson)
Transitional Poems
(1929 HP)
From Feathers to Iron
(1931 HP)
Dick Willoughby
(1933 Blackwell) (1938 Random House) - Juvenile
The Magnetic Mountain
(1933 Hogarth Press) - 100 signed & Numbered
A Hope for Poetry
(1934 Basil Blackwell)
Revolution in Writing
(1935 Hogarth Press Pb)
Collected Poems 1929-33
(1935) (1935 Random House)
A Time to Dance & other Poems
(1935 HP) - 750
(In) The Best Poems of 1935 (selected by Thomas Moult) (1935 Cape)

1936-1940
Noah and the Waters
(1936 HP) + 100 Signed & Numbered
Imagination and Thinking
(1936 British Inst of Adult Education Pb) - with Susan Stebbing
We're Not Going to do Nothing : A Reply to Mr Adlous Huxley's Pamphlet 'What are You
Going to Do About It ?'
(1936 Left Review Pb) + 50 Signed & Numbered
The Friendly Tree
(1936 Cape) (1937 Harper) - novel
Starting Point
(1937 Cape) (1938 Harper) - novel
(Ed) Ralph Fox : A Writer in Arms (1937) - with John Lehmann & T A Jackson
(Ed) The Mind in Chains - Socialism and the Cultural Revolution (1937)
(Ed) The Echoing Green : An Anthology of Verse (1937) - 3 vols
Overtures to Death & Other Poems
(1938 Cape)
(Ed) Anatomy of Oxford : An Anthology (1938) - with Charles Fenby
Challenge to the Night
(1939 Peter Davies)
Child of Misfortune
(1939 Cape) - novel
Poems in Wartime
(1940 Cape 2/6 Pb) - 250
Selected Poems
(1940 HP)
(Verse Trans) The Georgics of Virgil (1940)

1941-1950
(Ed) A New Anthology of Modern Verse 1920-1940 (1941) - with L A G Strong
Word Over All
(1943 Cape)
The Augustan Poets
(1943 Eyre & Spottiswoode Pb)
Poetry for You : A Book for Boys & Girls on the Enjoyment of Poetry
(1944 Blackwell) (1947 OUP, NY) - Juvenile
Short is the Time : Poems 1936-43
(1945)
(Ed) Orion : A Miscellany 2-3 (1945-6) - 2 vols. et al
The Poetic Image
(1947 Cape) (1947 OUP, US)
(Trans) Paul Valery : The Graveyard by the Sea (1947)
The Colloquial Element in English Poetry
(1947 Newcastle Upon Tyne Pb)
Enjoying Poetry : A Reader's Guide
(1947 Nat Book League Pb)
Collected Poems 1929-1936
(1948 Hogarth Press)
The Otterbury Incident
(1948 Putnam) (1949 Viking) - Edward Ardizzone - Juvenile
Poems 1943-1947
(1948 Cape) (1948 OUP, NY)

1951-1955
The Poet's Task
(1951 OUP Pb)
The Grand Manner
(1952)
(Trans) Virgil : Aeneid (1952)
An Italian Visit
(1953 Cape) (1953 Harper)
The Lyrical Poetry of Thomas Hardy
(1953)
(In) Souls in Torment by Ronald Searle (1953 Perpetua & M Joseph)
Christmas Eve
(1954 Faber Ariel Poem)
(Ed) Francis T Palgrave : The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs & Lyrical Poems
in the English Language
(1954)
Notable Images of Virtue : Emily Bronte, George Meredith, W B Yeats
(1954 Ryerson Press, Canada)
Collected Poems
(1954 Cape & Hogarth Press 21/-)

1955-1960
(Ed) The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-55 (1955 Chatto & Windus 12/6) - with John Lehmann
Pegasus and Other Poems
(1957 10/6)
The Newborn : D.M.B. 29th April1957
(1957)
(Ed) New Poems 1957 (1957) - with Kathleen Nott & Thomas Blackburn
The Poets Way of Knowledge : The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture
(1957 CUP)
The Buried Day
(1960 Chatto & Windus)

1961-1970
(Ed) A Book of English Lyrics (1961)
The Gate & other Poems
(1962 Chatto & Windus)
(Trans) Virgil : Eclogues (1963)
(Ed) The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (1963)
Requiem for the Living
(1964 Harper, NY)
On Not Saying Anything
(1964)
A Marriage Song for Albert and Barbara
(1965)
The Lyric Impulse
(1965 Harvard UP) (1965 Chatto & Windus)
Thomas Hardy
(1965) - with Anne Scott-James
The Room & Other Poems
(1965 Cape)
Selected Poems
(1967 Harper, NY)
The Abbey that Refused to Die : A Poem
(1967 Ballintubber Abbey, Co Mayo) - 8pp booklet
A Need for Poetry ?
(1968 Univ of Hull Pb)
(Ed) Edmund Blunden : The Midnight Skaters - Poems for Young Readers (1968)
(Ed) The Poems of Robert Browning (1969)
The Whispering Roots
(1970 Cape) (1970 Harper)
Going My Way ?
(1970 Poem of the Month) - broadsheet

After 1971
(Ed) A Choice of Keats's Verse (1971)
(Trans) Erzsi Gazdas : The Tomtit in the Rain - Traditional Hungarian Rhymes (1971)
- with Matyas Sarkozi
(Ed) George Crabbe (1973)
The Poems 1925-1972
(1977) - Edited by Ian Parsons
Posthumous Poems
(intro Jill Balcon) (1979 Whittington Press) - 250 signed by Balcon

READING
Clifford Dyment : C Day Lewis
(1955)
Sean Day Lewis : C Day Lewis - An English Literary Life
(1980 Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Geoffrey Handley-Taylor & Timothy d'Arch Smith : C Day-Lewis - The Poet Laureate
(1968 St James Press, London)
Geoffrey Handley-Taylor & Timothy d'Arch Smith : C Day-Lewis - A Bibliography
(1968 St James)
Joseph N Riddel : C Day Lewis
(1971)

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