Robert Wilson Lynd

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Robert Wilson Lynd
Irish literary revival
Years active1906–1949
SpouseSylvia Dryhurst
ChildrenMáire and Sigle
RelativesTim Wheeler (grandson)
The Baron Lowry (grandnephew)

Robert Wilson Lynd (

Irish nationalist
.

Early life

Lynd was born at 3 Brookhill Avenue in Cliftonville, Belfast to Robert John Lynd, a Presbyterian minister, and Sarah Rentoul Lynd, the second of seven children. Lynd's paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Scotland to Ireland.[1]

Lynd was educated at

Presbyterian Church Moderator as one of a long line of Presbyterian clergy in the family. A 2003 essayist on Lynd recounts that his "maternal grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all been Presbyterian clergymen."[1]

Literary career

Lynd began as a journalist, with

Daily News (later the News Chronicle), being its literary editor 1912–47.[3]

The Lynds were literary hosts, in the group including

Anna Livia Plurabelle to his own piano accompaniment.[citation needed
]

He used the pseudonym Y.Y (Ys, or wise) in writing for the New Statesman. According to C. H. Rolph's Kingsley (1973), Lynd's weekly essay, which ran from 1913 to 1945, was "irreplaceable". In 1941, editor Kingsley Martin decided to alternate it with pieces by James Bridie on Ireland, but the experiment was not at all a success.[citation needed]

Political activism

Attendance at a performance in London of

Third Home Rule Bill
. He later wrote: "Then came August 1914 and England began a war for the freedom of small nations by postponing the freedom of the only small nation in Europe which it was within her power to liberate with the stroke of a pen."

Of James Connolly, Lynd was to write: "among the sixteen men who were executed after the failure of the

Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, Lynd wrote an introduction to a new edition of James Connolly’s Labour in Irish history, first published in 1910.[7]

He became a fluent

Gaelic League member. As a Sinn Féin activist, he used the name Robiard Ó Flionn/Roibeard Ua Flionn.[8] He nonetheless rejected an ethnic definition of what it is to be Irish:[9]

The 'Real irishman' is neither essentially a Celt nor essentially a Catholic. He is merely a man who has the good or bad fortune to be born in Ireland or of Irish parents, and who in interested in Ireland more than any other country ... the Orange labourer of the north whose ancestors may have come from Scotland, has all the attributes of an Irishman no less than the Catholic labourer of the west, whose ancestors may have come from Greece, or from Spain, or from anywhere you care to speculate.[10]

In Belfast he was a member both of the republican Dungannon Clubs and of the Belfast Socialist Society.[11]

Personal life and death

Lynd married the writer

Sylvia Dryhurst on 21 April 1909. They had met at Gaelic League meetings in London. Their daughters Máire and Sigle became close friends of Isaiah Berlin. Máire married communist lawyer Jack Gaster and had three children. Sigle's son, born in 1941, is artist Tim Wheeler
.

In March 1924, Robert and Sylvia moved to what was to be their long-term married home, the elegant Regency house of 5 Keats Grove in the leafy suburb of Hampstead, north-west London. The house had been lived in by various members of Sylvia's (Dryhurst) family.[12]

James Joyce and his wife Nora Barnacle held their wedding lunch at the Lynds' house after getting married at Hampstead Town Hall on 4 July 1931.[12]

Lynd died in Hampstead in 1949.[8] He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. Seán MacBride, Minister for External Affairs, attended the funeral as the representative of the government of the Republic of Ireland.[13]

Works

"Cats", Ch. 5 of The Pleasure of Ignorance
Read by Perry Clayton for LibriVox
Audio 00:12:06 (full text)
Problems playing this file? See media help.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Wesley McCann (2006). Robert Lynd Biography (free sample). Book Rags. Retrieved 20 April 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  2. ^ Allen, Nicholas. "Good, James Winder". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  3. ^ Profile, ulsterhistory.co.uk; accessed 21 February 2017.
  4. ^ Robert and Sylvia were considered 'powerful' figures of London literary life: Sarah LeFanu, Rose Macaulay (2003), p. 153.
  5. ^ New Statesman America
  6. ^ Preface to Nora Connolly O'Brien (1935), James Connolly: Portrait of a Rebel Father. Tlabor Press, Dublin
  7. ^ "Robert Lynd: essayist and Irishman". History Ireland. 12 February 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2021.
  8. ^ a b "Robert Wilson (1879–1949): Journalist and writer". Dictionary of Ulster Biography. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  9. ISBN 1873687354
    .
  10. ^ Lynd, Robert (1910). Home Life in Ireland. Mills & Boon. p. 2.
  11. ISBN 9781909556065
    .
  12. ^ a b Wilson, N. (2017, "'So now tell me what you think!': Sylvia Lynd's collaborative reading and reviewing the work of an interwar middlewoman". Literature & History. ISSN 0306-1973. University of Reading.
  13. ^ "Robert Lynd: essayist and Irishman". History Ireland. 12 February 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2021.

External links

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