L. A. G. Strong (Leonard Alfred George Strong) Biography

Anglo-Irish novelist and poet, born in Plymouth, educated at Wadham College, Oxford. He was a school master in Oxford where he befriended the young C. Day Lewis. Strong worked as an editor in publishing houses and was a director of Methuen (1938–58). He received critical acclaim with his first novel, Dewer Rides (1929), set in Dartmoor. This was followed by many others, displaying the writer's predilection for the macabre and violent. Of these, several have an Irish background, including Sea Wall (1933). Travellers (1945; James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1946) was amongst his many volumes of short stories. His critical works include The Sacred River: An Approach to James Joyce (1949) and Personal Remarks (1953; essays) containing studies on Synge and Yeats. Strong also wrote dramatic works, biographies, poems, including the collection The Body's Imperfections (1957), and an autobiography, Green Memory (1961).