Jack Lindsay Biography

Australian writer, born in Melbourne, educated at Brisbane University. His early work includes a volume of poetry, Fauns and Ladies (1923), with illustrations by his father, Norman Lindsay. His energy was the driving force behind the creation of the periodical Vision (1923–4). He left for London in 1926 where he edited several journals, including The London Aphrodite, and had considerable success as founder of the Fanfrolico Press, an experience later described in his autobiographical work Fanfrolico and After (1962). In addition to distinguished political works from a Marxist position, he wrote a wide-ranging series of classical, historical, and art studies, acclaimed biographies of artists, and literary studies of William Blake (1927 and 1978), Mulk Raj Anand (1948), Dickens (1950), and Meredith (1956). He published 169 books including thirty-eight novels and twenty-five volumes of translations (from Latin, Greek, Polish, and Russian). Betrayed Spring (1953), A Local Habitation (1957), and All the Never-Never (1961) were novels focusing on the British. Decay and Renewal (1976) gathered critical writings on Australian and other literatures; Life Rarely Tells (1958; reprinted 1982) and The Roaring Twenties (1960) were absorbing and revealing autobiographies.