Ian Hamilton (critic)
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (January 2021) |
Ian Hamilton | |
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Darlington Grammar School | |
Alma mater | Keble College, Oxford |
Occupations |
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Spouses |
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Partner | Patricia Wheatley |
Children | 5 |
Robert Ian Hamilton (24 March 1938 – 27 December 2001) was a British literary critic, reviewer, biographer, poet, magazine editor and publisher.
Early life and education
He was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk. His parents were Scottish and had moved to Norfolk in 1936. The family moved to Darlington in 1951. Hamilton's civil engineer father died a few months later.
A keen soccer player, at the age of 15 Hamilton was diagnosed with a heart complaint. Unable to play games, he developed his interest in poetry. At the age of 17, in
Career
In 1962, Hamilton started The Review magazine, with Michael Fried, John Fuller, and Colin Falck. The Review became the most influential postwar British poetry magazine, publishing a wide variety of writers and both short and long pieces. It ran until its 10th-anniversary issue in 1972.
In 1964 The Review published a pamphlet of Hamilton's poems entitled Pretending Not to Sleep. It was one of three pamphlets that made up issue no. 13 of The Review.
In 1965, to make ends meet, Hamilton took a three-day-a-week job at The Times Literary Supplement, which soon grew to be the position of poetry and fiction editor, a post he held until 1973.
In 1970,
In 1974, Hamilton started The New Review, a large-format glossy magazine. Its first issue was 100 pages and featured many well-known writers. Again, it was influential in literary circles, and encouraged younger writers. But the magazine depended on Arts Council funding, and when that stopped, four and half years and 50 issues later, The New Review closed. Hamilton then wrote freelance, including regularly for the New Statesman.
In 1976, another pamphlet of poems by Hamilton appeared, entitled Returning, which contained 12 new poems.
After his friend poet
From 1984 to 1987 Hamilton presented the BBC Bookmark television programme, featuring many well-known writers.
In 1988, Faber published a new collection of his verse: Fifty Poems. This included the poems previously published in The Visit, together with 11 of the poems from Returning and six new poems. In the preface Hamilton wrote: "Fifty poems in twenty-five years: not much to show for half a lifetime, you might think. And in certain moods, I would agree." Ten years later, Faber published Sixty Poems, again matching his age, and these also incorporated earlier poems.
In 1989, he guest-edited the second number of the literary magazine Soho Square, published by Bloomsbury.
His experience with Salinger inspired Keepers of the Flame, Hamilton's 1992 book about the history of literary estates and unofficial biographers. His love of football led him to write Gazza Agonistes and Gazza Italia in 1993 and 1994, about Paul Gascoigne's seemingly wasted talent.
In 1999, Cargo Press published Another Round At The Pillars,[2] a collection of "essays, poems and reflections on Ian Hamilton" to celebrate his 60th birthday, with contributions from a range of prominent authors and poets, including Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Harold Pinter and Clive James.
Hamilton's final book was Against Oblivion: some lives of the Twentieth Century Poets (2002). Taking Samuel Johnson as his inspiration, he chose 45 dead 20th-century poets and assessed their achievement with his customary economy and wit. The book was published posthumously.
Hamilton died of cancer in 2001 in London. His first wife, Gisela Dietzel, and their son Matthew Hamilton survive him, as does his second wife Ahdaf Soueif and their two sons, and his long-term partner, Patricia Wheatley, by whom he had a son and daughter, Catherine and William Hamilton.
In 2002, Between the Lines published Ian Hamilton in Conversation with Dan Jacobson, in which the novelist and academic Dan Jacobson interviewed Hamilton about his life and career.
In 2009
A selection of Hamilton's books by other poets were donated to Keble College, Oxford, where they are accessible to students as the Ian Hamilton Poetry Library.
The critic James Wood includes an anecdote about Wood in his study The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (2004):
One London lunchtime, many years ago, the late poet and editor Ian Hamilton was sitting at his usual table in a Soho pub called the Pillars of Hercules. The pub was where much of the business of Hamilton's literary journal, The New Review, was conducted. It was sickeningly early—not to be at work, but to be at drink. A pale, haggard poet entered, and Hamilton offered him a chair and a glass of something. "Oh no, I just can’t keep drinking," said the weakened poet. "I must give it up. It's doing terrible things to me. It's not even giving me any pleasure any longer." But Hamilton, narrowing his eyes, responded to this feebleness in a tone of weary stoicism, and said in a quiet, hard voice, "Well, none of us likes it."[3]
The author Andrew O'Hagan recounts a near-identical story, but with Hamilton's rebuttal delivered to a "whey-faced" newspaper writer rather than a poet.[4]
Bibliography
- Pretending Not to Sleep (1964), poetry pamphlet
- The Visit (1970), poetry book
- A Poetry Chronicle (1973), essays and reviews
- Returning (1976), poetry pamphlet
- The Little Magazines: A Study of Six Editors (1976)
- Robert Lowell: A Biography (1982)
- In Search of J.D. Salinger (1988), biography and critique
- Fifty Poems (1988), poetry collection
- Writers in Hollywood 1915–1951 (1990)
- Keepers of the Flame (1992), on literary estates
- Gazza Agonistes (1993), on Paul Gascoigne
- Gazza Italia (1994), on Paul Gascoigne
- Walking Possession (1994), essays and reviews
- Oxford Companion to 20th-Century Poetry (1994), as editor
- Steps (1997), poetry
- A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (1998)
- Sixty Poems (1998), poetry collection
- The Trouble with Money (1998), essays
- Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets (2002)
References
- ISBN 978-0-8093-2135-3. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
- ISBN 9781899980062
- ^ Wood, James (2005). The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. Pimlico. pp. 1–2.
- ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
- "Interviews with Poets: A Note on Ian Hamilton". Interviews-with-poets.com. Archived from the original on 18 January 2006. Retrieved 29 October 2005.
- Morrison, Blake (28 December 2001). "Ian Hamilton Obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
- Jacobson, Dan (14 January 2002). "You Muddy Fools". London Review of Books (Interview). Retrieved 13 April 2015.