William Plomer

William Charles Franklyn Plomer (he pronounced the surname as "ploomer") (1903–1973) was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom. Plomer edited several of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in the 1950s and 60s.

He became famous in South Africa with his first novel, "Turbott Wolfe", which had inter-racial love and marriage as a theme. He was co-editor of the short-lived literary magazine "Voorslag" ("Whiplash") with two other South African rebels, Roy Campbell and Laurens van der Post; it promoted a racially equal South Africa.

He spent a period in Japan in the late 1920s, where he was friendly with Sherard Vines. There, according to biographers, he was in a same-sex relationship with a Japanese man. He was never openly gay during his lifetime; at most he alluded to the subject.

He then moved to England, and through his friendship with his publisher Virginia Woolf, entered the London literary circles. He became an important literary editor, for Faber and Faber. He was active as a librettist, with "Gloriana", "Curlew River", "The Burning Fiery Furnace" and "The Prodigal Son" for Benjamin Britten.

Bibliography

*1925. "Turbott Wolfe" (novel)
*1927. "Notes for Poems" (poetry)
*1927. "I Speak of Africa" (short stories)
*1929. "The Family Tree" (poetry)
*1929. "Paper Houses" (short stories)
*1931. "Sado" (novel)
*1932. "The Case is Altered" (novel)
*1932. "The Fivefold Screen" (poetry)
*1933. "The Child of Queen Victoria" (short stories)
*1933. "Cecil Rhodes" (biography)
*1934. "The Invaders" (novel)
*1936. "Visiting the Caves" (poetry)
*1936. "Ali the Lion" (biography, reissued in 1970 as "The Diamond of Janina")
*1938. "Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert" (1870–1879)
*1940. "Selected Poems"
*1942. "In a Bombed House, 1941: Elegy in Memory of Anthony Butts" (poetry)
*1943. "Double Lives" (memoir)
*1945. "The Dorking Thigh and Other Satires" (poetry)
*1949. "Four Countries" (short stories)
*1952. "Museum Pieces" (novel)
*1955. "A Shot in the Park" (poetry, published in U.S. as "Borderline Ballads")
*1958. "At Home" (memoir)
*1960. "Collected Poems" (poetry)
*1960. "A Choice of Ballads" (poetry)
*1966. "Taste and Remember" (poetry)
*1975. "The Autobiography of William Plomer" (revision of "Double Lives" and "At Home")
*1978. "Electric Delights" (ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis) (previously uncollected pieces)

References

* Peter F. Alexander. "William Plomer: A Biography" (Oxford Lives, 1991)

External links

* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp03584 Picture of Plomer] from the National Portrait Gallery.