A. L. Rowse

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A. L. Rowse Companion of Honour

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Alfred Leslie Rowse

.

Born in Cornwall and raised in modest circumstances, he was encouraged to study for

In the 1930s, he stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Penryn and Falmouth, though later in life he became a Conservative.

Life and politics

Rowse was born at Tregonissey, near

Any such frustrations were channelled into academia, which reaped him dividends later in life.

Rowse had planned to study

.

In 1931, Rowse contested the parliamentary seat of

. A general election was expected to take place in 1939, and Rowse, who was again Labour's candidate for Penryn & Falmouth, was not expected to have a Liberal opponent. That would increase his chances of winning. But, due to outbreak of war, the election did not take place and his political career was effectively ended.

Undeterred, Rowse chose to continue his career by seeking administrative positions at

) in 1958.

Rowse published about 100 books. By the mid-20th century, he was a celebrated author and much-travelled lecturer, especially in the United States. He also published many popular articles in newspapers and magazines in Great Britain and the United States. His brilliance was widely recognised. His knack for the sensational, as well as his academic boldness (which some considered to be irresponsible carelessness), sustained his reputation. His opinions on rival popular historians, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper and A. J. P. Taylor, were expressed sometimes in very ripe terms.^{[citation needed]}

In his later years, Rowse moved increasingly towards the

Another was his horror at the degradation of standards in modern society. He is reported as saying: "... this filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts".

Despite international academic success, Rowse remained proud of his Cornish roots. He retired from Oxford in 1973 to Trenarren House, his Cornish home, from where he remained active as writer, reviewer and conversationalist until immobilised by a stroke the year before his death. His ashes are buried in the Campdowns Cemetery, Charlestown near St Austell.

Elizabethan and Shakespearean scholarship

Rowse's early works focus on 16th-century England and his first full-length historical monograph, Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge (1937), was a biography of a 16th-century sailor. His next was Tudor Cornwall (1941), a lively detailed account of Cornish society in the 16th century. He consolidated his reputation with a one-volume general history of England, The Spirit of English History (1943), but his most important work was the historical trilogy The Elizabethan Age: The England of Elizabeth (1950), The Expansion of Elizabethan England (1955), and The Elizabethan Renaissance (1971–72), respectively examine the society, overseas exploration, and culture of late 16th-century England.

In 1963 Rowse began to concentrate on

.

Rowse's "discoveries" about Shakespeare's sonnets amount to the following:

1. The Fair Youth was the 19-year-old Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, extremely handsome and bisexual.
2. The sonnets were written 1592–1594/5.
3. The "rival poet" was Christopher Marlowe.
4. The "Dark Lady" was Emilia Lanier. His use of the diaries of Simon Forman, which contained material about her, influenced other scholars.
5. Christopher Marlowe's death is recorded in the sonnets.
6. Shakespeare was a heterosexual man, who was faced with an unusual situation when the handsome, young, bisexual Earl of Southampton fell in love with him.

Rowse was dismissive of those who rejected his views. He supported his conclusions. In the case of Shakespeare's sexuality, he emphasised the playwright's heterosexual inclinations by noting that he had impregnated an older woman by the time he was 18, and was consequently obliged to marry her. Moreover, he fathered three children by the time he was 21. In the sonnets, Shakespeare's explicit erotic interest lies with the Dark Lady; he obsesses about her. Shakespeare was still married and Rowse believes he was having an extramarital affair.

Personal attitudes

The diary excerpts published in 2003 reveal that "he was an overt even rather proud homosexual in a pre-Wolfenden age, fascinated by young policemen and sailors, obsessively speculating on the sexual proclivities of everyone he meets".^[4] Much later, following retirement, he said, "of course, I used to be a homo; but now, when it doesn't matter, if anything I'm a hetero".^[5]

He was aware of his own intelligence from earliest childhood, and obsessed that others either did not accept this fact, or not quickly enough. The diaries describe what he said were "a series of often inane jealousies".^[4]

He described a "Slacker State": "I don't want to have my money scalped off me to maintain other people's children. I don't like other people; I particularly don't like their children; I deeply disapprove of their proliferation making the globe uninhabitable. The fucking idiots – I don't want to pay for their fucking."^[4]

Literary career

Rowse's first book was On History, a Study of Present Tendencies published in 1927 as the seventh volume of

. His best-seller was his first volume of autobiography, A Cornish Childhood, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1942, which has gone on to sell nearly half a million copies worldwide. It describes his hard struggle to get to the University of Oxford and his love/hate relationship with Cornwall.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, he served as the General Editor for the popular "Teach Yourself History" and "Men and their Times" series, published by the English Universities Press.

Rowse wrote poetry all his life. He contributed poems to Public School Verse whilst at St Austell Grammar School. He also had verse published in Oxford 1923, Oxford 1924, and Oxford 1925. His collected poems A Life were published in 1981. The poetry is mainly autobiographical, descriptive of place (especially Cornwall) and people he knew and cared for, e.g. The Progress of Love, which describes his platonic love for

. Unusually for a British poet, Rowse wrote a great number of poems inspired by American scenery.

His most controversial book (at the time of publication) was on the subject of human sexuality: Homosexuals in History (1977).

Biographer

He wrote other biographies of English historical and literary figures, and many other historical works. His biographies include studies of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and the Earl of Southampton, the major players in the sonnets, as well as later luminaries of English literature such as

in common devotion to William Shakespeare".

Bibliophile

One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of

: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'

Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse's own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books and the rest were sold to dealers. The London booksellers Heywood Hill produced two catalogues of books from his library.

Honours

Rowse was elected a

).

In addition to his DLitt (Oxon) degree (1953), Rowse received the honorary degrees of DLitt from the University of Exeter in 1960 and DCL from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada, the same year.

In 1968 he was made a

Lef A Gernow ('Voice of Cornwall'), reflecting his high standing in the Cornish community.

He was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule II in 1972, and received the Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1982.^[6]

Rowse was appointed a

.

Posthumous reputation

As well as his own appearances on radio and television, Rowse has been depicted in various TV drama documentaries about British politics in the 1930s and appeasement.

Christopher William Hill's radio play Accolades, rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2007 as a tribute to its star, Ian Richardson, who had died the previous month, covers the period leading up to the publication of Shakespeare the Man in 1973 and publicity surrounding Rowse's unshakable confidence that he had discovered the identity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. It was broadcast again on 9 July 2008.

A Cornish Childhood has also been adapted for voices (in the style of Under Milk Wood) by Judith Cook.

Selected works

• On History: a Study of Present Tendencies, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1927
• Science and History: a New View of History, London: W. W. Norton, 1928
• Politics and the Younger Generation, London: Faber & Faber, 1931
• The Question of the House of Lords, London: Hogarth Press, 1934
• Queen Elizabeth
  and Her Subjects (with G. B. Harrison), London: Allen & Unwin, 1935
• Mr.
  Keynes
  and the Labour Movement, London: Macmillan, 1936
• Sir Richard Grenville
  of the "Revenge", London: Jonathan Cape, 1937
• What is Wrong with the Germans?, 1940^[7]
• Tudor Cornwall, London: Jonathan Cape, 1941
• A Cornish Childhood, London: Jonathan Cape, 1942
• The Spirit of English History, London: Jonathan Cape, 1943
• The English Spirit: Essays in History and Literature, London: Macmillan, 1944
• West-Country Stories, London: Macmillan, 1945
• The Use of History (key volume in the "Teach Yourself History" series), London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946
• The End of an Epoch: Reflections on Contemporary History, London: Macmillan, 1947
• The England of Elizabeth: the Structure of Society. London: Macmillan, 1950
• The English Past: Evocation of Persons and Places, London: Macmillan, 1951
• An Elizabethan Garland, London: Macmillan, 1953
• The Expansion of Elizabethan England, London: Macmillan, 1955
• The Early Churchills, London: Macmillan, 1956
• The Later Churchills, London: Macmillan, 1958
• The Elizabethans and America: The Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge, 1958, London, Macmillan, 1959
• St Austell: Church, Town, Parish, St Austell: H. E. Warne, 1960
• All Souls and Appeasement: a Contribution to Contemporary History, London: Macmillan, 1961
• Ralegh and the Throckmortons, London: Macmillan, 1962
• William Shakespeare: a Biography, London: Macmillan, 1963
• Christopher Marlowe: a biography, London: Macmillan, 1964
• Shakespeare's Sonnets, London: Macmillan, 1964
• A Cornishman at Oxford, London: Jonathan Cape, 1965
• Shakespeare's Southampton: Patron of Virginia, London: Macmillan, 1965
• Bosworth Field and the Wars of the Roses, London: Macmillan, 1966
• Cornish Stories, London: Macmillan, 1967
• A Cornish Anthology, London: Macmillan, 1968
• The Cornish in America, London: Macmillan, 1969
• The Elizabethan Renaissance: the Life of Society, London: Macmillan, 1971
• The Elizabethan Renaissance: the Cultural Achievement, London: Macmillan, 1972
• The Tower of London in the History of the Nation, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972
• Shakespeare
  The Man, London: Macmillan, 1973
• Windsor Castle In the History of the Nation, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974
• Victorian and Edwardian Cornwall from old photographs, London: Batsford, 1974 (Introduction and commentaries by Rowse; ten extracts from Betjeman)
• Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974
• Discoveries and Reviews: from Renaissance to Restoration, London: Macmillan, 1975
• Oxford: In the History of the Nation, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975
• Jonathan Swift: Major Prophet, London, Thames & Hudson, 1975
• A Cornishman Abroad, London: Jonathan Cape, 1976
• Matthew Arnold: Poet and Prophet, London: Thames & Hudson, 1976
• Homosexuals in History, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977
• Shakespeare
  the Elizabethan, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977
• Puritan
  : Portrait of a Mind, London: Macmillan, 1977
• The Byrons and the Trevanions, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978
• A Man of the Thirties, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979
• Memories of Men and Women, London: Eyre Methuen, 1980
• A Man of Singular Virtue: being a Life of Sir Thomas More by his Son-in-Law William Roper, and a Selection of More's Letters, London: Folio Society, 1980 (Editor)
• Shakespeare's Globe: his Intellectual and Moral Outlook, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981
• A Life: Collected Poems, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1981
• Eminent Elizabethans, London: Macmillan, 1983
• Night at the Carn and Other Stories, London: William Kimber, 1984
• Shakespeare's Characters: a Complete Guide, London: Methuen, 1984
• Glimpses of the Great, London: Methuen, 1985
• The Little Land of Cornwall, Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986
• A Quartet of Cornish Cats, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986
• Stories From Trenarren, London: William Kimber, 1986
• Reflections on the
  Puritan
  Revolution, London: Methuen, 1986
• The Poet Auden: a Personal Memoir, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987
• Court and Country: Studies in Tudor Social History, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987
• Froude the Historian: Victorian Man of Letters, Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1987
• Quiller-Couch
  : a Portrait of "Q", London: Methuen, 1988
• A. L. Rowse's Cornwall: a Journey through Cornwall's Past and Present, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988
• Friends and Contemporaries, London: Methuen, 1989
• The Controversial Colensos, Redruth: Dyllansow Truran, 1989
• Discovering
  Shakespeare
  : a Chapter in Literary History, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989
• Four Caroline Portraits, London: Duckworth, 1993
• All Souls in My Time, London: Duckworth, 1993
• The
  Puritan
  Revolution, London: Duckworth, 1994
• Historians I Have Known, London: Duckworth, 1995
• My View of
  Shakespeare
  , London: Duckworth, 1996
• Cornish Place Rhymes, Tiverton: Cornwall Books, 1997 (posthumous commemorative volume begun by the author; preface by the editor, S. Butler)
• The Elizabethan Age (a four-volume set composed of The England of Elizabeth; The Expansion of Elizabethan England; The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society; The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Cultural Achievement), London: Folio Society, 2012

Biography and bibliography

• ISBN 0-9515686-5-5
• Cauveren, Sydney (2000), A. L. Rowse: A Bibliophile's Extensive Bibliography, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press
  ISBN 0-8108-3641-6
• Cauveren, Sydney (2001), "A. L. Rowse: Historian and Friend",
  Contemporary Review
  , December 2001, pp. 340–346
• Jacob, Valerie (2001), Tregonissey to Trenarren: A. L. Rowse – The Cornish Years, St. Austell: Valerie Jacob
  ISBN 0-9541505-0-3
• ISBN 0-7139-9353-7
• ISBN 0-7139-9572-6
• ISBN 0-9539972-1-9
• ISBN 0-85989-744-3
• Donald Adamson is due to publish a biography of A. L. Rowse (from a friend's perspective), see article in the International Literary Quarterly.
• Slattery-Christy, David (2017), Other People's Fu**ing! An Oxford Affair. New play exploring the relationship between A.L. Rowse and Adam von Trott during the 1930s in Oxford. Published by Christyplays. www.christyplays.com

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to A. L. Rowse.

• Papers of A L Rowse: research, literary and personal manuscripts at the University of Exeter