Jack Lindsay, an outstanding English writer and public figure, the most ardent fighter for peace and the national liberation movement

Jack Lindsay, an outstanding English writer and public figure, ranks among the most ardent fighters for peace and the national liberation movement. Being a poet and novelist, he was at the same time a literary critic and historian as well as translator.

He was born in Melbourne, Australia. His father was an artist. He spent his boyhood in Queensland, where he was educated at the Boys' Grammar School and the University, taking first class hon­ours in Latin and Greek. After some misdirected efforts to start a literary movement in Sydney, he came to England in 1926. For some years he was connected with the Fanfrolico Publishing House in London, doing mainly translations from Greek and Latin. But at the end of the twenties he had developed a method for historical novels. In his historical novels he pursues a definite line, portraying the progressive social and political movements of the past.

His main interest had been history in general, especially with reference to the problems of cultural development. In A Short History of Culture (1939) he essayed a broad view of the theme with extreme detail and documentation.

Until 1953 Jack Lindsay represented mainly the genre of the historical novel. His trilogy includes: Rome for Sale (1933), Caesar is Dead (1934), Last Days with Cleopatra (1935). In 1938 Lindsay published another historical novel 1649. A Novel of a Year. In 1948 his novel Men of Forty-Eight appeared dedicated to the Chartist Movement and to the revolutionary events of 1848 in England. In 1950 Fires at Smithfield was published. It describes the struggle of the English people against religious fanatism and persecution in the Middle Ages. The Great Oak (1957) is a novel reflecting the life and the struggle of the English peasants during the period of "enclo­sure".

In all of his historical novels Jack Lindsay sets the task to reveal the historical succession of the revolutionary movement of the English people and to show the people as the motive power in the development of different historical epochs.

But gradually Jack Lindsay's interests turned from the past to the present and it was the portrayal of contemporary England that marked a new stage in the author's creative activity. In the series entitled Novels of the British Way - Betrayed Spring (1953), The Rising Tide (1954), The Moment of Choice (1955), A Local Habita­tion (1957), The Revolt of the Sons (I960) and Masks and Faces (1963) - we get acquainted with the life of representatives of dif­ferent classes of contemporary England. The narrative of the above mentioned novels covers a period of about 25 years up to the end of the 50s of the XXth century.

Betrayed Spring. In spite of the vast number of personages the plot is centered around four families which live in different parts of England. Thus the reader gets acquainted not only with the vast panorama of the political and social life of England but also with the way of life of different layers of society. The novel Betrayed Spring consists of different episodes which take place simultaneously in London, Lancashire, Yorkshire and in Tyneside, thus giv­ing a detailed account of the life in the four most important English industrial districts. The completeness of the above mentioned frag­mentary portrayal is achieved thanks to the depiction of closely interwoven broad social classes of society including: the unemployed, the workers, great factory owners and the intelligentsia. The plot of the numerous episodes is centered around the three brothers-in-­arms Harry Manson, Dick Baxter, and Kit Swinton who return to their native towns after World War II. Describing their fate Lind­say shows the great political changes going on in the country after the war; he exposes the activities of the Labour Party which only pretends to defend the interests of the toiling masses.

J. Lindsay's autobiographical trilogy includes Life Rarely Tells (1958), The Roaring Twenties (1960), Fanfrolico and After (1962). The above mentioned books are not only of great interest as autobi­ographical works but as documents covering a period of time be­tween the twenties and thirties of the XXth century in England. Jack Lindsay is the author of many references and critical articles on various English writers, including Charles Dickens and George Meredith.

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