Allen Upward
Allen Upward was an English writer born in Worcester in 1863, whose life spanned a variety of artistic and professional pursuits until his tragic death in London in 1926. He had a diverse education, attending the Royal University of Ireland, and was called to the bar in 1887, but he experienced a sporadic legal career. Upward was not only a lawyer but also a poet, playwright, novelist, teacher, and journalist, and he lived in several places, including Ireland, Wales, and Africa, where he engaged with nationalist movements. His later work focused on the idealist movement, as he sought to highlight neglected genius, including his own, leading him to establish a publishing house for idealist literature. Although his philosophical works received little attention, his romance novels, like "The Queen Against Owen," found commercial success. Upward was remarkably prolific, publishing numerous works across different genres, including spy novels and poetry, with Ezra Pound being one of the few to appreciate his poetic abilities. Despite his literary output, Upward struggled for recognition and ultimately faced profound personal challenges, culminating in his tragic decision to take his own life.
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Allen Upward
Writer
- Born: 1863
- Birthplace: Worcester, England
- Died: November 12, 1926
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Allen Upward was born in Worcester, England, in 1863, and died—by his own hand—in London on November 12, 1926. Between those dates, he lived a strange and finally unfulfilled life. As a child, he moved often, and his education was eclectic, but he attended the Royal University of Ireland, and was called to the bar in 1887. In addition to a sporadic career in law, he was a poet, playwright, novelist, teacher, and journalist. At different periods in his career he lived in Ireland, Wales, and Africa, working with nationalist movements wherever he lived.
In the second half of his career, Upward devoted himself to the idealist movement, which meant for him the recognition of neglected genius (particularly his own) in an unreceptive time. He went so far as to launch his own publishing house to print idealist works. While his own The New Word: An Open Letter to the Swedish Academy on the Meaning of the Word Idealist (1908) and The Divine Mystery: A Reading of the History of Christianity Down to the Time of Christ (1913) were largely ignored, his romance novels (such as The Queen Against Owen, 1894, or Lord Alistair’s Rebellion, 1909), which he wrote to support himself, sold well.
Upward was incredibly prolific—he published five books in 1900 alone, and twenty between 1900 and 1910. He produced some three dozen volumes in his lifetime, including spy novels (he authored the series “International Spy” in Pearson’s Magazine between 1895 and 1905), plays, and even two volumes of poetry (Songs in Ziklag, 1888, and Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar, 1927). His final mystery novels (The Club of Masks, 1926, and The Venetian Key, 1927) were considered two of the best of that popular genre.
The one modernist writer who recognized Upward’s poetic talents was the critic and poet Ezra Pound, who recommended “Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar” for Harriet Monroe’s pioneering magazine Poetry, and then published the poems in the first anthology of Imagist poetry, Des Imagistes, which Pound edited in 1914. Pound also believed that Upward took his own life because the Nobel Prize in literature had earlier gone to George Bernard Shaw. Upward’s career reveals a writer who rarely recognized his own real literary gifts, but rather sought recognition in fields where he would never succeed.