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A READER’S GUIDE TO PENGUIN NEW WRITING 1940-1950
By Ken Clay
Penniless Press Publications. 240 pages.
Reviewed by Jim Burns
It took me quite a few years, but I did eventually manage to collect
the forty issues of Penguin
New Writing, finding them in second-hand bookshops, charity
shops, jumble sales, and the like. Friends also helped by contacting
me to say they’d come across copies somewhere and which issues was I
looking for? I wasn’t too fussed about the condition, provided all
the pages were there.
I’ve often had occasion to refer to a story, poem, article, but the
problem has always been one of knowing in which issue the item I was
looking for had been published. I recall once wanting to re-read two
articles that John Hampson wrote under the title, “Movements in the
Underground,” in which he looked at what might be termed literature
that dealt with the seamy side of life. I did find them (in issues
27 and 28, published in April and July, 1946), but it would have
been much easier had this newly-published guide been available.
Incidentally, I was reminded of them when I visited the current John
Minton exhibition at Pallant House,
The first issue of Penguin
New Writing appeared in 1940. It was an extension of
New Writing that John
Lehmann had edited in the 1930s. But, as he pointed out in his
Foreword, the fact of it now being published and distributed by
Penguin meant that it would reach a far wider readership than
previously. Its size, too, was of importance in a period when paper
rationing would affect publishing. And the size also indicated that,
as Ken Clay mentions, “they were designed to go In a battledress or
jacket pocket”.
The 1940s were boom years for little magazines. Clay refers to
Horizon as one of the key
ones of the period, and it’s true that it was an important and
influential publication. But
Penguin New Writing was more representative of its time, and
offered a broader range of writers and material. It needs to be
viewed alongside another similar magazine, Reginald Moore’s
Modern Reading, which
managed to survive for 23 issues between 1941 and 1953, and had a
similar democratic spirit to sustain it. Like
Penguin New Writing, it
was produced to a war economy standard, but lacked the kind of
financial and distribution support that Penguin could provide. That
it did reach a wide readership perhaps says something about Reginald
Moore’s persistence, and the demand for magazines of its kind that
existed in the 1940s. A poem, a story, an article could be read in
the gaps between long stints in factories and offices and the
demands of service life. And more people seemed to want to express
themselves in print. Penguin
New Writing and Modern
Reading were the kinds of publications that provided outlets for
known and unknown writers.
It’s fascinating to look at the index of writers who were published
in Penguin New Writing.
There are obviously some well-known names, such as Dylan Thomas,
Stephen Spender, V.S.Pritchett, and Louis Macneice. But I’ve always
thought that one of the pleasures of collecting little magazines
from the past is looking to see what lesser-known poets and prose
writers were doing. There are stories by Leslie Halward, who perhaps
isn’t totally forgotten but it’s doubtful if all that many people
now read his work. His 1936 collection of short stories,
To Tea on Sunday, is
worth reading if you can find a copy. I mentioned John Hampson
earlier, and his Saturday
Night at the Greyhound, first published in 1931, has been
reprinted in more recent years. But, again, I wonder who now reads
him?
Halward and Hampson did at least have some sort of literary
reputation, but there are other names that it might prove almost
impossible to trace in terms of establishing whether or not they
published anything else. Helen Spalding, John R. Townsend, Bruce
Richardson. There are some brief notes about what they were doing
when their work was in
Penguin New Writing, and I suppose an assiduous researcher might
be able to track down further information, but it won’t necessarily
tell us a great deal. It’s a fact that many people publish a poem or
short story in a little magazine or two and then, for various
reasons, don’t follow up with more material, or don’t get it
published. Family life, work, other interests, can all intervene to
limit the time available for writing. And some people perhaps don’t
feel the need to say any more in print.
It’s certainly true that the post-1945 years saw a decline in little
magazine publishing, so that by 1950 or so many of them had ceased
to exist. John
Lehmann’s Foreword for the final issue of
Penguin New Writing in
1950 said that its circulation was “still remarkably high for
something exclusively devoted to literature and the arts, it is not
high enough to make both ends meet”. And the fact was that the
post-war years brought in a period of austerity and rationing that
hit everyone hard. People simply hadn’t the money or the time,
perhaps even the inclinations, to buy little magazines. Their
priorities were in other areas of life and work as men and women
returned from the services and started to cope with the realities of
civilian life. It has been suggested, also, that the later issues of
the magazine began to show that the “professionals” were taking over
from the occasional writers from the factories and the forces who
had previously found a place in
Penguin New Writing.
Ken Clay refers to himself as a “little mag nut,” and I happily
place myself in the same category. It isn’t just a case of
collecting the magazines, though there are enough of them cluttering
up shelf space in my house, but writing for and about them, and even
editing one or two. Most magazines will never be indexed or given
the kind of loving treatment that Clay has applied to
Penguin New Writing. He
has produced an invaluable book and deserves to be praised for it.
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