John Wyndham
John Wyndham, born John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris on July 10, 1903, in Knowle, England, was a notable British science fiction author whose work gained prominence in the mid-20th century. He grew up in Birmingham, experiencing family turmoil due to his parents' separation. After a varied career that included roles in farming, advertising, and serving as a cipher operator during World War II, Wyndham ventured into writing. His literary career began in the 1930s with short stories and novels, but he is best known for his unique science fiction narratives that often juxtapose ordinary British life with extraordinary catastrophic events.
Wyndham's seminal works include "The Day of the Triffids," which imagines a world overrun by man-eating plants after a meteor shower blinds humanity, and "The Midwich Cuckoos," which explores the psychological ramifications of alien impregnation in a small town. His writing style and themes have drawn comparisons to H.G. Wells, though he also acknowledged influences from earlier authors. Wyndham published under several pseudonyms, reflecting a preference for privacy and possibly stemming from his complex childhood experiences. He passed away on March 11, 1969, leaving behind a legacy that continues to influence the science fiction genre.
On this Page
Subject Terms
John Wyndham
Writer
- Born: July 10, 1903
- Birthplace: Knowle, Warwickshire, England
- Died: March 11, 1969
- Place of death: Petersfield, England
Biography
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, who would become famous for the science-fiction novels he wrote under the name John Wyndham, was born on July 10, 1903. His birthplace was Knowle, then part of the county of Warwickshire in central England. He was the son of lawyer George Beynon Harris and Gertrude (Parkes) Harris, and grew up in the Edgbaston district of the city of Birmingham. Wyndham’s parents separated in 1911, due largely to his father’s philandering and an attendant series of court actions, family disputes, and press reports. Wyndham, his younger brother Vivian, and their mother remained in the area, however, and Wyndham went on to enroll in a small private school in 1911. Subsequently, he attended Shardlow Hall boarding school in Derbyshire and, from 1918 to 1921, Bedales School in Hampshire.
In 1925, Wyndham moved into the Penn Club, a Quaker residence hall in London. He was involved in farming, commercial art, the law, and advertising. During World War II, he worked as an official censor before joining the Royal Signal Corps as a cipher operator in 1943. He participated in the Normandy Landing on June 6, 1944, and left the service in August, 1946.
Wyndham had met teacher Grace Wilson, another resident of the Penn Club, in 1931, and the two subsequently became companions. They married only in 1963, after which they moved to the village of Steep near Bedales School; they had no children. Wyndham died on March 11, 1969.
As John Beynon Harris, Wyndham made his first commercial sale, a story called “Worlds to Barter,” to the science- fiction magazine Wonder Stories in 1931. He continued to publish similar stories throughout the 1930’s, and produced his first novel, the lost-race adventure The Secret People, as John Beynon during the same decade. He experimented with the mystery genre, but it was in science fiction that he made his mark, writing novels describing a variety of catastrophes.
The first and most famous of these was The Day of the Triffids, which posited a world blinded by a meteor shower and beset by man-eating plants. The Kraken Wakes (also known as Out of the Deeps) describes an alien invasion launched from the sea. The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned) marked an advance in psychological depth. In this novel, the women of a small town discover that they have been impregnated by aliens. Almost all his works draw an ironic contrast between their comfortable British setting and the frightening events they describe.
Critics routinely compared Wyndham’s work to that of H. G. Wells, but the tradition in which he wrote stretches back earlier, to the 1885 catastrophe novel After London by Richard Jefferies. Wyndham published under five different names, including Johnson Harris and Lucas Parkes—a practice that, like his choice of subject matter and his predilection for privacy, commentators have traced to his traumatic childhood.