Gilbert Cannan

Gilbert Cannan (25 June 1884 – 30 June 1955) was a British novelist and dramatist.

Early life

Born in Manchester of Scottish descent, he got on badly with his family, and in 1897 he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Cannan. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and King's College, Cambridge; he started on a legal career, but turned to writing in 1908, after a short spell as an actor.

Career

He worked first as a translator, and reviewed in London publications. Many of his novels are in part autobiographical, and fit into a novel sequence the "Lawrie Saga", around the character Stephen Lawrie. Samuel Butler was a major influence on his fiction.

He was employed as secretary by J. M. Barrie working with him in their efforts against censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain. A relationship developed in 1909 between Cannan and Barrie's wife Mary (nee Ansell), an actress. Cannan had been wooing Kathleen Bruce, who at the same time was receiving advances from explorer Robert Falcon Scott. When Bruce decided to marry Scott, Mary Barrie's sympathy for Cannan developed a momentum of its own. Sir James sought to reconciled, but relented and divorced her in a high-profile case, and she and Cannan were married in 1910. Cannan was caricatured as Mr. Gunn, a minor character in George Bernard Shaw's 1911 drama "Fanny's First Play".

During World War I he was a pacifist and then conscientious objector, and was involved in the National Council Against Conscription. He used his experiences in later novels, making the character Melian Stokes in "Pugs and Peacocks" a portrait of Bertrand Russell. He had known Ottoline Morrell from before the war. During it he moved in her circle, introducing her to D. H. Lawrence, and knew also Dora Carrington, Dorothy Brett and the artist Mark Gertler. Cannan's book "Mendel" was based on Gertler's early life (Mendel being his Yiddish given name). Gertler painted "Gilbert Cannan and his Mill"; the picture is now in the Ashmolean Museum. The mill was at Cholesbury in Buckinghamshire, where Cannan was living in 1916, and which attracted a number of his intellectual circle (including Lawrence and his wife Frieda, and Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry). The picture also shows the Newfoundland dog Luath whose coat was copied for Nana, the dog who served as the Darling children's nurse in "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up".Birkin, Andrew, "J. M. Barrie and The Lost Boys", Constable & Co, 1979]

His marriage to Mary broke up during 1918, when he had an affair with Gwen Wilson; who then dropped him for Henry Mond.

After the war Cannan wrote and translated a great deal, and traveled. A breakdown in 1923 proved untreatable and he spent the rest of his life confined to a mental hospital.

Family

The poet May Wedderburn Cannan and her sister, writer Joanna Cannan, were cousins of his, daughters of the academic Charles Cannan (Dean of Trinity College, Oxford, and Secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press); as was Professor Edwin Cannan, the noted LSE economist (and brother of Charles Cannan); Joanna's daughter Diana Pullein-Thompson was his biographer. Joanna Cannan's son, Denis Cannan also followed in his footsteps, becoming a dramatist in his own right.

Works

*"Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland" (1910-1913) translator
*"Peter Homunculus" (1909) first novel
*"Heinrich Heine's Memoirs, edited by Gustav Karpeles" (1910) translator
*"Devious Ways" (1910) novel
*"Little Brother" (1912) novel
*"The Joy of the Theatre" (1913) essays
*"Four Plays" (1913)
*"Round The Corner" (1913) novel
*"Love" (1914)
*"Old Mole" (1914) novel
*"Old Mole's Novel" (1914) novel
*"Satire" (1914)
*"Young Earnest - The Romance Of A Bad Start In Life" (1915)
*"Samuel Butler: A Critical Study" (1915)
*"Windmills: A Book of Fables" (1915) fantasy
*"Three Pretty Men" (1916) novel
*"Mendel: a story of youth" (1916) novel, loosely based on Mark Gertler's early life
*"The House with the Mezzanine, and Other Stories" by Anton Chekov (1917) translator with S. S. Koteliansky
*"The Stucco House" (1917) novel
*"Freedom" (1917)
*"The Anatomy of Society" (1919)
*"Time and Eternity" (1919)
*"Pink roses" (1919)
*" My Life" (1920)
*"Pugs and Peacocks" (1921)
*"Sembal" (1922)
*"Annette and Bennety" (1922)
*"Noel - An Epic in Seven Cantos" (1922)
*"Seven Plays" (1923)
*"House of Prophecy" (1924)
*"Diary of A.O. Barnabooth" by Valery Larbaud, translator

References

*"Gilbert Cannan: a Georgian prodigy" (1978) Diana Farr (Diana Pullein-Thompson)

External links

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