Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington , 1892-1962, English poet and novelist. While studying at the Univ. of London, he became acquainted with Ezra Pound and H. D. (Hilda Doolittle ), whom he married in 1913. He was one of the leading imagists and helped edit the Egoist, the principal imagist organ. His early poems, extraordinary in their verbal precision, were published under the title Images (1915). Images of War and Images of Desire followed in 1919, the latter marking a departure from pure imagism. Aldington's first novel, Death of a Hero (1929), was a bitter indictment of war. It was followed by The Colonel's Daughter (1931), equally biting in its satiric intent. Aldington was at his best when in an angry state of artistic and intellectual rebellion; experiments with milder satire proved less effective. After World War II he published little poetry. His most important work was in biography— Wellington (1946); Portrait of a Genius, But … (1950), a study of D. H. Lawrence; Lawrence of Arabia (1955), a harshly critical portrait of T. E. Lawrence; and Portrait of a Rebel: the Life and Work of Robert Louis Stevenson (1957).

Bibliography: See his autobiographical Life for Life's Sake (1941); study by N. T. Gates (1974).

Aldington, Richard (Edward Godfree) (1892–1962), married Hilda Doolittle ( H. D.) in 1913 and they both worked as editors on the Imagist periodical the Egoist. In 1915 Aldington's first volume of poetry, Images 1910–1915, was published by the Poetry Bookshop. (See Imagism.) Subsequent volumes include Images of War (1919) and A Fool i' the Forest (1925), which shows perhaps an excessive debt to The Waste Land. Aldington achieved popular success with his first novel, Death of a Hero (1929, abridged; Paris, 1930, unexpurgated), based on his own war experiences. It relates the life and death of George Winterbourne, killed in action in 1918; the first two parts dwell on his youth and ‘advanced’ marriage, satirizing the complacency and frivolity of pre-war middle-class and Bohemian England, and Part III is a horrifying description of life at the front in France. Of his later works the best known are his biographies, which include Portrait of a Genius, But…(1950), a controversial life of D. H. Lawrence, and his life of T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry (1955), which caused a furore by its attack on Lawrence as an ‘impudent mythomaniac’. He also published many translations, an autobiography (Life for Life's Sake, 1941), and critical essays.