Roy Campbell: A Descriptive and Annotated Bibliography with notes on unpublished sources by D.S.J. Parsons (review)

friendship with Parnell and the writers of the Celtic twilight. Sometimes he moves to a mystery-ridden melancholy: 'Is it really that I myself have gone, and they live on?' (p 108) Walker reminds us that this melancholy is 'more than a personal obsession: Because so many Scots, as travellers, have delineated this land of memory, Scotland remains accessible as the archetypal realm of 'harsh North ... declining West: A Scot from Graham's own region, Walker adds just enough glossary to help us past the 'Iarochs' of the 'drumly' river, through the 'bealochs: to the realms of grey. He leaves undisturbed the oddities of diction, the quirky idiom and punctuation of his eccentric, talented author. (ELIZABETH WATERSTON) D.S.). Parsons. Roy Campbell: A Descriptive and Annotated Bibliography witl! notes on unpublished sources Garland Publishing 1<)81. xxvii, 278, illus. $20.00 The range of specialisms to be found in Canadian English departments is a continual surprise and delight. To the understanding of Roy Campbell , the controversial South African satirist whose two faces are revealed in the title of Rowland Smith's major study, Lyric and Polemic (McGillQueen 's University Press 1972), 0.5.). Parsons has now contributed a most helpful bibliography. There is truth in his claim that a comprehensive view of Campbell's writing depends to an unusual extent on some knowledge of his life with its 'exoticism and violent variety' soldiering in the Spanish Civil War and the East Africa Campaign, bullfighting in Provence, farming in Portugal. Parsons had contacts with his elder brother, once listened to Roy reciting his poetry, and after his death in 1957 visited his relatives in Portugal and Durban. Though Parsons provides excellent notes on Campbell's books, the shorter prose writings (section H) are left practically unannotated. The item 'Poetry and Experience' (H54) was the convocation address I heard Campbell give to the multiracial University of Natal after receiving an honorary 0 LITT, in '954. It excludes five minutes of extempore diatribe which electrified the proceedings but which those of us who knew him were expecting (his brother George was my doctor): for that we have to turn to the local newspapers. Ninety pages are devoted to books and articles about Campbell, each skillully summarized or quoted from. These make fascinating reading. The student should, nevertheless, remember that personalities influenced the warmth of praise or vituperation expressed. Though no indication is usually given in the bibliography as to what degree ofapproval Campbell had shown his reviewers in earlier reviews of their own work, his titles sometimes speak for themselves. Thus the tone of 'Moo, moo! HUMANITIES 445 or ye olde new awareness: Campbell's review of an anthology of contemporary poetry edited by Geoffrey Grigson, helps to explain Grigson's later complaints, when reviewing Campbell's Collected Poems of 1957, that 'there is no more tenderness behind his poetic face than behind the face of a beetle' (J.III.XX.I- how cumbersome these references are!). The whole sequence of the Campbell-Grigson encounters, physical and verbal , is revealing; but the index defeats us by omitting proper references to the poet's shorter prose pieces. Though generous in extent (40 pp), the index seems at times the product of a mechanical system which has classified entries under misguided headings; thus Campbell's review of The Selected Poems of Francis Carey Slater is not sub 'Slater' but Selected Poems ... Under Campbell's Collected Poems it omits reference to all three separately published volumes, and to the representative reviews of them in section j.m (a rich category, incidentally, which few bibliographies supply). If space had permitted, Grigson's negative remarks could have been balanced by the more favourable TLS review of the 1957 collection (8 November 1957). The section devoted to the first appearance of poems in periodicals represents considerable research. Perhaps the fact that Campbell was one of the editors of Voorslag (which 'Whiplashed' the colour-bar) and The Catacomb, periodicals in which many of them were published, should have been mentioned here rather than later. Another invaluable aid to scholars is section K, a list of research collections in various countries where manuscripts and typescripts are to be found. These are necessarily incomplete. Thus the manuscript of Flowering Rifle, with many revisions, which is in the Cory Library at Rhodes University, South Africa (as Roy told me), is not listed along with the separate Rhodes collection. More cross-referencing is needed, eg between lists of the University of Saskatchewan manuscripts and the editor's article on them fifty pages earlier : the index gives only the latter. I am surprised at the brevity of section F ('Published Letters'), but have identified only one omission - the bitter TLS correspondence with R.M. Nadal (MarchiApriI1953) over Campbell's alleged inaccuracies in his book on Lorca. Despite inevitable imperfections, however, this bibliography should be a boon to universities round the world wherever Commonwealth Literature is studied. (NORMAN H. MACKENZIE) Jeffrey Heath. Tile Picturesque Prison: Evelyn Waugh and His Writing McGill-Queen's University Press. xviii, 334· $35.00 Evelyn Waugh requires careful handling. It is easy to enlist oneself as an uncritical fan of his mordant humour and gorgeous prose style. It is equally easy to reject Waugh out of hand because of his cruelty and ...