Day-Lewis, Cecil (1904–72) (who wrote as C. Day Lewis), was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he was befriended by
Bowra and became associated with a group of young left-wing poets of which
Auden was the acknowledged leader, and with whom he edited
Oxford Poetry (1927). (The nickname ‘MacSpaunday’ was coined by R.
Campbell: see also
Pylon school.) He joined the Communist Party in 1936 and edited a socialist symposium,
The Mind in Chains (1937), with contributions from
Upward,
Madge,
R. Warner, and others. These preoccupations are not reflected in his earliest verse (e.g.
Beechen Vigil, 1925), but became apparent in
Transitional Poem (1929),
From Feathers to Iron (1931), and
The Magnetic Mountain (1933), which have a strong revolutionary flavour. The title poem of
A Time to Dance (1935) more ambiguously celebrates the heroic flight of Parer and M'Intosh to Australia. After the poor reception of
Noah and the Waters (1936), a verse morality play about the class struggle, his poetry became more pastoral and personal. During the 1930s he also embarked, under the pseudonym of ‘Nicholas Blake’, on a career as a writer of
detective fiction; his first book in this genre,
A Question of Proof (1935), introducing his Audenesque detective Nigel Strangeways, was followed by some twenty others.
The Friendly Tree (1936) was the first of three largely autobiographical novels.
In 1938 he moved to Musbury, Devon; his poetry of this period (
Overtures to Death, 1938;
Poems in Wartime, 1940) reflects obvious concerns. He also published in 1940 the first of his translations, a version of
Virgil's Georgics. From this time he became an increasingly establishment figure, meanwhile consolidating his literary reputation with a translation of Valéry (1946), further translations of Virgil (
The Aeneid, 1952;
The Eclogues, 1963), and collections of original verse, including
An Italian Visit (1953), recording a journey with R.
Lehmann. He was professor of poetry at Oxford (1951–6) and became
poet lauriate in 1968.
