John Gawsworth
John Gawsworth was the pen name of Terence Ian Fitton Armstrong, born on June 29, 1912, in London. He faced a troubled childhood, marked by parental divorce and allegations of abuse, which influenced his later life and work. Gawsworth became known for his contributions to the horror and mystery genres, particularly through his anthologies, which were notable for their thoroughness and have since served as resources for modern editors. His literary career was intertwined with significant figures like Arthur Machen, who inspired Gawsworth's early writings. However, his career began to decline in the 1940s, partly due to his struggles with alcoholism, which led to personal turmoil and a tumultuous second marriage. Despite these challenges, he continued to write, producing a significant volume of unpublished poetry. Gawsworth's life ended on September 23, 1970, due to a pulmonary embolism, shortly before he could have received an inheritance that might have changed his circumstances. His story reflects themes of struggle, creativity, and the often harsh realities faced by artists.
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John Gawsworth
Writer
- Born: June 29, 1912
- Birthplace: Baron's Court, Kensington, London, England
- Died: September 23, 1970
Biography
John Gawsworth was the pseudonym used by Terence Ian Fitton Armstrong, born on June 29, 1912, in the Baron’s Court district of London. He later accused his father, Frederick Percy Armstrong, of having abused him in childhood. It is only known for certain that the elder Armstrong and his wife, Ethel Jackson Armstrong, divorced when Terence was very young. In that time divorce was a great stigma, and it left a bitter mark on the young man. It seems to have also invested him with a permanent need to make himself seem more interesting than he was, leading to all manner of fabrications about his ancestry, including claims that he was related to Mary Fitton, the “Dark Lady” of William Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Left behind after his mother went to Canada to marry her former husband’s brother, Terence lived in a garret and worked at various bookstores. This employment enabled him to form connections with Arthur Machen, a reader for the publisher Ernest Benn. He began to write verse, at this time adopting the pseudonym of John Gawsworth, and writing in a style heavily imitative of Machen.
In 1933, he married Barbara Kentish, social editor of the British newspaper The Daily Mail. This connection led to work compiling mystery and horror anthologies that were often used as means to lure subscribers in the fiercely competitive newspaper environment of that period. His anthologies were so thorough and comprehensive that they have since been used by modern horror editors as sources for public-domain horror stories to reprint. Many of these anthologies contain “collaborations” that were little more than Gawsworth fixing up story fragments offered by various other writers and turning them into complete stories.
Throughout his career, Gawsworth put forward other authors he deemed particularly noteworthy. However, by the 1940’s, his career was in decline, at least party as a result of his alcoholism. He divorced his first wife in 1948 and married Doreen Amily Ada Downie. For a time, they lived in a home noteworthy for its literary connections. Gawsworth became prone to fits of alcoholic rage, and once threw his typewriter out the window, which failed to further his literary career. Even while deprived of a typewriter, he continued to handwrite poems in little notebooks, with the result that hundreds of unpublished Gawsworth poems have survived.
In his later years he developed diabetes, and many of his last works were done while in various hospitals. He died on September 23, 1970, as the result of a pulmonary embolism. In a note of irony, two days later word arrived of an inheritance from his family, a sum that could have prevented his decline and allowed him to live comfortably for life, had it arrived in time.