Miron Grindea

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Miron Grindea
Born
Mondi Miron Grunberg

(1909-01-31)31 January 1909
ADAM International Review
Spouse(s)Carola Rabinovici, m. 1936
Children1

Miron Grindea

ADAM International Review, a literary magazine published for more than 50 years. In 1984 ADAM was said to be "the world's longest surviving literary magazine".[2] Its title was an acronym for "Arts, Drama, Architecture and Music".[3]

Biography

Born Mondi Miron Grunberg in the town of

Second World War, and he was soon employed in the BBC’s European Intelligence Section at Bush House, London
.

ADAM International Review, 1941–95

When in 1941, many émigré authors, including

PEN, under the presidency of H. G. Wells
, Grindea was inspired to start an international literary journal. To avoid wartime restrictions on new publications, he revived ADAM in September that year.

His eminent associates and contributors included Cyril Connolly, Stephen Spender, J. B. Priestley (who were all among the several members of ADAM’s editorial board) T. S. Eliot and George D. Painter. Grindea's personal library (housed at the Foyles Special Collections Library at the Maughan Library) includes signed copies of works by Arthur Koestler, André Gide, Robert Graves, Bertrand Russell, Tristan Tzara, Patrick Moore and Graham Greene and many others. As David Gascoyne noted: "It was in fact obvious, in the mid-forties,to any educated reader, that Adam's only rival was the then recently defunct Criterion, edited by T S Eliot."[6]

Grindea edited and, with subsidies, financed ADAM from his London home at Emperor’s Gate in

Chagall.[8] Among those who made their debut in ADAM are Maureen Duffy and Wolf Mankowitz,[9] and others Grindea enlisted as sometime workers include Margaret Busby (who on leaving university was briefly his editorial assistant) and Erik de Mauny, who recalled: "I am sure that I am not the only one among his friends to have been telephoned late at night with urgent requests for help and advice with the next number of Adam."[6] Hanif Kureishi was quoted in a 2014 Guardian article as saying: "I only once pitchforked a person I knew directly into a novel to make a point, and that was Miron Grindea, the editor of the international literary magazine Adam, whose respectful attendance on the great and good in his editorials I found highly amusing."[10]

At the time of his death aged 86, in London in 1995, Grindea was working on the 500th edition of ADAM.[11]

Awards

  • 1955, Prix de l'Académie française
  • 1965, Lundquist Literary Prize, Sweden
  • 1974,
    Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur
  • 1977,
    Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
    (MBE)
  • 1983, Honorary DLitt degree from the University of Kent
  • 1985, Commander,
    Order of Arts and Letters
    , France
  • 1986,
    Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
    (OBE)

Legacy

In 2006 ADAM: An Anthology of Miron Grindea's ADAM Editorials[12] (2 volumes), selected and edited by his grand-daughter Rachel Lasserson[13] (former editor of Jewish Quarterly), was published (London: Vallentine Mitchell),[11] with an Introduction entitled "Music, Proust and Anti-Semitism".

Archives

Miron Grindea's papers and the ADAM archives[14] are largely held at King's College London.[15] A commemorative exhibition, Miron Grindea and the Art of Literary Journalism, was held at the Weston Room, Maughan Library and Information Services Centre, Chancery Lane, in 2003.

Two portraits are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London: an unattributed photo of Grindea taken in 1939[16] and a photograph by Barry Marsden (1989).[17]

References

  1. ^ Calder, John (20 November 1995). "Miron Grindea: The creator of Adam". The Guardian. p. 12.
  2. ^ "ADAM" Magazine, Channel 4 News, ITN, 30 January 1984. JISC MediaHub.
  3. ^ Bettina Lemm, ADAM description. Index of Modernist Magazines.
  4. The Telegraph
    , 23 July 2009.
  5. ^ Jeremy Siepmann, "Carola Grindea obituary", The Guardian, 1 September 2009.
  6. ^ a b "Letters: Perceptive and passionate eye on the arts", Obituaries, The Guardian, 23 November 1995, p. 18.
  7. ^ John Calder, "The creator of Adam" (obituary), The Guardian, 20 November 1995, p. 12.
  8. ^ The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, ed. Jenny Stringer, with an introduction by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1996; reprinted 2004.
  9. ^ Anthony Rudolf, "Obituary: Miron Grindea", The Independent, 20 November 1995.
  10. ^ D. J. Taylor, "Can't writers make anything up?", The Guardian, 7 February 2014.
  11. ^ a b C. J. Schüler, "Miron Grindea: The Don Quixote of Kensington" (review of ADAM: An Anthology of Miron Grindea's ADAM Editorials), The Independent, 2 April 2006. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  12. ^ Rupert Christiansen, "The outsider who felt the cold", The Spectator, 11 March 2006. Review of ADAM: An Anthology of Miron Grindea's ADAM Editorials.
  13. ^ "Growing up with ADAM - Rachel Lasserson remembers a very extraordinary, ordinary man", Jewish Quarterly, Spring 2006, 53:1, pp. 87–88. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  14. ^ Summary of ADAM archives held at King's College, London.
  15. ^ "Adam Collection", Art & Culture, King's College London, 14 May 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
  16. ^ Miron Grindea by Unknown photographer, bromide print on card mount, 1939. National Portrait Gallery, London.
  17. ^ Miron Grindea photo by Barry Marsden, bromide fibre print, 1989. National Portrait Gallery, London.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miron_Grindea&oldid=1179507364"