Roy Campbell

Roy Campbell 1901-57, South African poet and satirist. After some time in England and France Campbell returned to South Africa to edit Voorslag [Whiplash], a satirical magazine, publishing works such as The Flaming Terrapin (1924) and The Georgiad (1931), an attack on the Bloomsbury group . In the 1930s, after a conversion to Roman Catholicism, Campbell turned to heroic poetry as in Mithraic Emblems (1936). Campbell's enthusiasm for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, expressed in Flowering Rifle (1939), has long interfered with an unbiased assessment of his work. He served with the British army in both world wars. His collected poems were published in 1957.

Bibliography: See the two volumes of his autobiography (1934, 1952) and biography by P. Alexander (1982).

Campbell, Roy ( Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell) (1901–57), poet, born in Natal, came to England in 1918. His works include The Flaming Terrapin (1924); The Wayzgoose (1928), a satire on South African life; Adamastor (1930); The Georgiad (1931), a long, biting attack on the Bloomsbury Group; Flowering Reeds (1933), lyrics; Mithraic Emblems (1936); Flowering Rifle (1939), a pro-Fascist work which brought him much opprobium; and Sons of the Mistral (1941), a selection of his best poems. His Collected Poems appeared in 1950. He published two autobiographical works, Broken Record (1934), a narrative of adventure and Fascist opinions, and Light on a Dark Horse (1951), propagating his legend. He did much translation and in 1952 published an important study and translation of García Lorca.