Herbert Read

Herbert Edward Read (1893 - 1968) was an English poet and critic of literature and art.

He was the Kirbymoorside in North Yorkshire. His studies at the University of Leeds were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, during which he served in France. Naked Warriors (1919) was his first volume of poetry; it deals with the horrors of war. His work, which shows the influence of imagism, was mainly in free verse. His Collected Poems appeared in 1966. As a critic of literature, Read mainly concerned himself with the English Romantic poets (as in The True Voice of Feeling: Studies in English Romantic Poetry, 1953, for example).

However, Read was (and remains) better known as an art critic. He was a champion of modern British artists such as Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. He became associated with Nash's contemporary arts group Unit One. He co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts with Roland Penrose in 1947.

Among Read's writings on art criticsm are Art Now (1933), Art and Industry (1934), the influential Education Through Art (1943) and A Concise History of Modern Painting (1959).

Read was knighted in 1953.