Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

John Hampson, the Woolfs, and the Hogarth Press
his/her mind is free—in their capacity as publishers they were not in a position to risk the
legal proceedings that publication might entail. In this sense the decision not to publish
Go Seek a Stranger represents a missed opportunity, although not the fi rst, for the Hogarth
Press. Norah James’s novel Sleeveless Errand (1929) was also rejected by the Woolfs. It was
subsequently banned when published by Scholartis in England and appeared with Jack
Kahane’s Obelisk Press in Paris in 1929 (Marshik 119).
Although a great admirer of John Hampson, Birmingham writer Walter Allen, in a
comment which captures the tensions that existed between Birmingham and London,
suggests Hampson’s involvement with the Woolfs was somewhat detrimental to his work.
Allen suggests that the excellent reception of his fi rst novel at the Hogarth Press “led
[Hampson] to equate Bloomsbury with the world and to overrate the nature of literary
success” (As I Walked 62). However, the shape of Hampson’s relationship with Leonard
and Virginia Woolf and the Hogarth Press was not that unusual. It was not uncommon
for the Woolfs to publish one or two works by a particular author only to see him/her
move on for one reason or another to a diff erent publisher. Furthermore the Woolfs did
not abandon Hampson. Th us, as late as June of 1939, Virginia Woolf, having read, it
seems, the reader’s report for Hampson’s Care of “Th e Grand,” responds to questions about
the use of slang (“bog” instead “W-C,” “bugger” rather than “bitch”). She closes her last
letter to Hampson looking forward to a moment when writers will be free from taboos
in language and with a proposal that beautifully anticipates this conference: “Th is pen is
such that I cant write more, but we hope to see you again in London, or in Birmingham.
Yours sincerely, Virginia Woolf” (L6: 339).
Notes
1. Th anks especially to Roger Hubank and Joy Kirk and to Mercer Simpson for their support and generous
hospitality, also to Verity Andrews at Reading University Special Collections, Dr. Patricia McGuire at King’s
College Library, Cambridge, Andrew Gray at Durham University, Laila Miletic-Vejzovic at Washington State
University, Matthew Bailey at the National Portrait Gallery, Peter Alexander and David Lodge. Unpublished
correspondence is reproduced with the permission of Th e Society of Authors as agent for the Provost and
Scholars of King’s College Cambridge, Duff Hart-Davis and Durham University Library, and Roger Hubank.
Th e cover of Hampson’s Saturday Night at the Greyhound is reproduced by permission of Th e Random
House Group Ltd. and Washington State University. Th anks also to Emma, Simon, and Leo Hall.
2. Other close friends include Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden, both with Birmingham connections, Robert
Graves, Graham Greene, and Murray Constantine (Katharine Burdekin), author of Swastika Night.
3. Th e term Birmingham Group was fi rst coined by American journalist and editor of New Stories Edward
O’Brien, to include Hampson, Walter Allen, Leslie Halward, and Peter Chamberlain. Walter Brierley and
Hedley Carter were from Derbyshire and also attended meetings of the group, although irregularly.
4. MacNeice was one of several writers who responded to Virginia Woolf’s essay “Th e Leaning Tower” (under
the title “Th e Tower that Once”) in John Lehmann’s Hogarth Press Folios of New Writing Spring 1941.
Woolf’s essay had appeared in the same journal in Autumn 1940.
5. It is unclear who if anyone suggested the Hogarth Press to Hampson.
6. In his documentary “Birmingham Writers in the Th irties” (Central TV, 1982), David Lodge argues that
England developed a social conscience in the 1930s and therefore there formed a ready-made audience for
working-class writers.
7. Forster felt that it was “the fi ction of the Midlands, as opposed to southern or suburban life…brilliantly
done” that constituted the real value of the work (Letter to John Hampson).
8. Th anks to Leslie Hankins for noting this.
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