Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

“OUTSIDE THE MAGIC (AND TYRANNICAL) TRIANGLE OF LONDON-
OXFORD-CAMBRIDGE”: JOHN HAMPSON, THE WOOLFS, AND THE
HOGARTH PRESS
by Helen Southworth
In honor of the choice of location for this year’s conference, my paper explores the relationship
between the Woolfs, their Hogarth Press, and the work of Birmingham-born
writer John Hampson Simpson (1901-1955). 1 Hampson, the name under which he
wrote, published two novels with the Hogarth Press, the highly successful Saturday Night
at the Greyhound (which was among the top ten bestsellers at the press) in February 1931
and a second novel entitled O Providence in 1932. A short story, “Th e Long Shadow,” was
included in the Hogarth Press volume of prose and poetry entitled New Country edited
by Michael Roberts in 1933. Two subsequent novels were rejected by the Woolfs, as had
been Hampson’s fi rst submission in 1928—a homosexual novel called Go Seek a Stranger.
Th is paper pursues Hogarth Press historian J. H.Willis’s assertion that Hampson’s
Saturday Night at the Greyhound off ered the Woolfs “an uncharted literary landscape” and
situates Hampson’s work in terms of the Woolfs’ agenda at the press (189). Hampson’s
twenty-fi ve-year-long relationship with the Woolfs tells an interesting story about the
kind of author and the kind of material published by the Hogarth Press and about the
Woolfs’ attention to the political climate at a moment when the press, in operation since
1917, had already become as close as it got to being a commercial operation. To this end
I will look at two things—fi rst the signifi cance of the Woolfs’ decision to publish Saturday
Night at the Greyhound and O Providence and second their decision not to publish Go Seek
a Stranger. While the latter has never been published it does exist in manuscript.
Hampson has shown up in a couple of recent publications: two letters in Sybil Oldfi
eld’s collection of condolence letters (90, 153-55) and another in Beth Daugherty’s collection
of letters from readers to Woolf in which Hampson expresses his admiration for
Th e Waves (94). What becomes clear in all three of these letters and others exchanged
with the Woolfs is the respect and aff ection Hampson felt for both Virginia and Leonard
Woolf and vice versa. Even after the Woolfs stopped publishing his work, Hampson maintained
ties with them, dedicating his 1936 novel, Family Curse, “to Leonard Woolf, with
gratitude.” By the time of Virginia Woolf’s death in 1941 Hampson had a wide circle of
literary friends, many of whom he had acquired via the Woolfs and via the Press: among
them South African based Hogarth Press writer William Plomer, E. M. Forster, Hogarth
Press employee, poet and publisher John Lehmann, from whose autobiographical work
In My Own Time the title quote of this paper is taken, and even Birmingham based author
Walter Allen who says he fi rst contacted Hampson through the Hogarth Press (As I
Walked 58). 2 After Virginia Woolf’s death Hampson maintained contact with Leonard;
he also wrote a radio play tribute about Virginia Woolf called “A Room of One’s Own”
for the Midlands Home Service (May 1946), an article about food and wine in her work
for Wine and Food magazine (1944) and included a reference to Woolf’s Oxbridge lunch
and dinner scenes in A Room of One’s Own in his Th e English at Table (part of the Britain