Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly was an English man of letters. He was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, in 1903, to a wealthy family of Anglo-Irish extraction. He was educated at St. Cyprian's School and Eton College, at both of which he was an exact comtemporary of George Orwell, who remained a life-long friend. Connolly later attended Balliol College, Oxford.
A regular contributor to the leftist New Statesman in the 1930's, Connolly went on to co-edit, with Stephen Spender, the short-lived but influential literary magazine Horizon from 1939 to 1941. Later he was the literary editor for the The Observer, and, after 1945, the chief book reviewer for the London Sunday Times. Connolly wrote only one novel, Rock Pool (1935) a satirical work which was generally well received. Perhaps his best known work is the autobiography Enemies of Promise (1938), in which he attempted to explain why he failed to produce the literary masterpiece which he and others believed he should have been capable of writing. He died in 1974.
Works
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| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Cyril Connolly.
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- Rock Pool, 1935
- Enemies of Promise, 1938
- The Unquiet Grave, 1944
- The Condemned Playground, 1945
- Previous Convictions, 1964
- The Modern Movement: 100 Key Books From England, France, and America, 1880?1950, 1965
