David Jones CH (November 1, 1895-1974) was both an artist and one of the most important first generation British modernist poets. His work was formed by his Welsh heritage and his Catholicism. T. S. Eliot considered Jones to be a writer of major importance and his The Anathemata was considered by W. H. Auden to be the most important long poem written in English in the 20th century. The Order of the Companions of Honour is a British and Commonwealth Order (decoration). ... November 1 is the 305th day of the year (306th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 60 days remaining. ... 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Mountebanks ... Motto: (Welsh for Wales forever) Anthem: Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau Capital Cardiff Largest city Cardiff Official language(s) English, Welsh Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP  - First Minister Rhodri Morgan AM Unification    - by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn 1056  Area    - Total 20,779 km² (3rd in... As a Christian ecclesiastical term, Catholic - from the Greek adjective , meaning general or universal[2] - is described in the Oxford Dictionary as follows: ~Church, (originally) whole body of Christians; ~, belonging to or in accord with (a) this, (b) the church before separation into Greek or Eastern and Latin or Western... Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 ? January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets, are considered defining achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. ... Christopher Isherwood (left) and W.H. Auden (right), photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden, known more commonly as W. H. Auden, (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973) was an English poet, often cited as one of the most influential of the 20th century. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Early life

Jones was born on 1 November, 1895 in Brockley, Kent, now a suburb of London. His father, James Jones was born in Flintshire, North Wales, to a Welsh-speaking family; he was discouraged from speaking Welsh by his father, who, in common with many Welsh parents of the time, believed that habitual use of the language would only hold his child back in his career. James Jones moved to London to work as a printer's overseer for the Christian Herald Press, and it was here that he met his wife, Alice, a Londoner born and bred. They had three children, Harold (who died in his late teens of tuberculosis), Alice, and Walter David, later known solely as David. Brockley is an area of the London Borough of Lewisham in England. ... Kent is a county in England, south-east of London. ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ...

Jones exhibited artistic promise at an early age, even entering his drawings into exhibitions of children's artwork. He wrote that from the age of six he knew that he would devote his life to art. At fourteen, he persuaded his parents to allow him to abandon traditional education for art school, and in 1909, he entered the Camberwell Art School, where he was introduced to the work of the Impressionists and Pre-Raphaelites. 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... South London Gallery Camberwell College of Arts is an art college in Camberwell, south London. ... See also Impressionist (entertainment): A girl with a watering can by Renoir, 1876 Impressionism was a 19th century art movement, which began as a private association of Paris-based artists who exhibited publicly in 1874. ... The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. ...

With the outbreak of the First World War, Jones enlisted with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and served on the Western Front until the end of the war. His experiences in the trenches were to prove extremely important in his later painting and poetry. Combatants Allied Powers: France Italy Russia Serbia United Kingdom United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria Germany Ottoman Empire Commanders Ferdinand Foch Georges Clemenceau Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Wilhelm II Paul von Hindenburg Reinhard... The Royal Welch Fusiliers was a regiment of the British Army, part of the Prince of Wales Division. ... Western Front was a term used during the First and Second World Wars to describe the contested armed frontier between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West. ...

His grave can be found in Crofton Park, Lewisham, SE13, near Brockley. Crofton Park is the southern part of Brockley, SE4 which is a postal district of London, England. ...

Jones as Artist

After the war, Jones entered the Westminster School of Art, where he developed an interest in Post-Impressionism and studied under the English artist Walter Sickert, among other influential teachers. He also became increasingly attracted by Roman Catholicism, and in 1921 he converted, choosing 'Michael' as his confirmation name. It was probably the priest who received Jones into the Church, Father John O'Connor (in fact the model for G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown character), who suggested that he contact the Catholic artist Eric Gill. Gill ran the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, based on the medieval guild model, in Ditchling, Sussex. Jones joined the guild and learned wood and copper engraving as well as experimenting with wood carving. Jones soon began producing book illustrations for the St. Dominic's Press, and he would later illustrate for The Golden Cockerel Press, for whom he engraved the Cockerel itself in 1925. The Westminster School of Art was a former art school in Westminster, London, England. ... A Hundred Years of Independence by Henri Rousseau Post-Impressionism is a term applied to painting styles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — after Impressionism. ... Walter Sickert Walter Richard Sickert (May 31, 1860 in Munich (Germany) – January 22, 1942) was an English impressionist painter. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Father John OConnor (1870 - 1952), a Roman Catholic parish priest in Bradford, Yorkshire, was the basis of G. K. Chestertons fictional detective Father Brown. ... Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (February 22, 1882–November 17, 1940) was a British sculptor, typographer and engraver. ... The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic was an art colony and experiment in communal life in early 20th century England. ... A guild is an association of people of the same trade or pursuits (with a similar skill or craft), formed to protect mutual interests and maintain standards of workmanship and ethical conduct. ... Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. ... Sussex is a traditional county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. ... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ... Hilary Douglas Clark Pepler (1878–1951) was an English printer, writer and poet. ... Golden Cockerel Press was a major English private press operating between 1920 and 1961. ...

Eric Gill split with the Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic and moved with his family and some followers to Capel-y-ffin, a village in southern Wales, to pursue a rural way of life. Jones spent much of the years 1924 to 1927 living with the Gills and assorted hangers-on in a rambling former monastery just outside Capel-y-ffin. He had already become engaged to Gill's middle daughter, Petra, whose characteristic long neck and high forehead continued as standard female features in Jones's artwork for the rest of his career, even though his engagement to her did not last more than a couple of years.

Jones's major illustrated series include wood engravings produced for editions of The Book of Jonah, The Chester Play Of The Deluge, Aesop's Fables and Gulliver's Travels as well as for a Welsh translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Llyfr y Pregethwr. He produced an important group of copperplate engravings for an edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He also executed commissions for one-off engravings such as his illustration for T.S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees. Aesops Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop (circa 620 BC – 560 BC), a slave and story-teller living in Ancient Greece. ... Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer by Richard Redgrave Gullivers Travels (1726, amended 1735) is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the travellers tales literary sub-genre. ... One of a set of engraved metal plate illustrations by Gustave Doré. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797-1799 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads (1797). ...

Despite his success and growing reputation as an illustrator, Jones seems to have become disaffected by the medium. He professed great disappointment in the way that his illustrations for Gulliver's Travels had been subsequently hand-coloured by art students, and complained about the reproduction of the very dark wood engravings for The Chester Play of The Deluge. This may have influenced his decision later in life to concentrate on painting. His style changed over time from more traditional watercolour landscapes to a unique mixture of pencil and watercolour resulting in dense and busy works full of symbolism. His best-known paintings include early seascapes such as 'Manawydan's Glass Door' and later works on legendary subjects, such as Trystan ac Esyllt (Tristan and Iseult). He is also much admired for a genre that he devised later in life, which he termed 'painted inscriptions', and these exert a continuing influence on calligraphers. The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. ...

Jones as Poet

Although he had been trying to write about his wartime experiences for some time, it was not until 1937 that Jones published his first literary effort. In Parenthesis, which was published by Faber & Faber with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, was written in a mixture of verse and prose: it defies categorization as either poem or novel, and critics still differ as to what term best applies. Jones's literary debut won praise from critics and admiration from fellow-poets such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, as well as garnering the Hawthornden Prize in the following year. Jones's style can best be described as High Modernism; the poem draws on literary influences from the 6th-century Welsh epic Y Gododdin to Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur to try to make sense of the carnage he witnessed in the trenches. 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 ? January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets, are considered defining achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. ... A 1907 engraving of Yeats. ... The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award. ... Y Gododdin (The Gododdin), attributed to the 7th century poet Aneirin, is a series of 99 elegies to the men of the kingdom of Gododdin in north-eastern Britain who fell in the battle of Catraeth, thought to be Catterick in North Yorkshire, against the Angles, ca. ... Sir Thomas Malory (c. ... Le Morte dArthur (The Death of Arthur)—the title is actually spelled as Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions—is Sir Thomas Malorys compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. ...

His next book, The Anathemata, appeared in 1952 (again published by Faber and Faber). Inspired in part by a visit to Palestine during which he was struck by the historic parallels between the British and Roman occupations of the region, the book draws on materials from early British history and mythology and the history and myths of the Mediterranean region to explore the possibility of small cultures resisting the power of empire. The poem received mixed reviews in the press, but was acclaimed by other literary artists such as W.H. Auden, Kathleen Raine and William Carlos Williams. 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Faber and Faber is a celebrated publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing the poetry of T. S. Eliot. ... Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ... The Roman Empire was a phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by an autocratic form of government. ... The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ... Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ... Kathleen Jessie Raine (June 14, 1908 – July 6, 2003) was a British poet, critic and independent scholar writing in particular on William Blake and W. B. Yeats. ... William Carlos Williams Dr. William Carlos Williams (sometimes known as WCW) (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an American poet closely associated with Modernism and Imagism. ...

For the rest of his life, Jones worked on a long poem, of which The Anathemata was intended to form part. Sections of the incomplete work were published as individual poems, mainly in the London literary magazine Agenda, but in 1974, they were collected for publication in book form as The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (once again under Faber and Faber's auspices). A posthumous volume of previously-unseen materials was edited by Harman Grisewood & René Hague and was published by Agenda Editions as The Roman Quarry. Agenda is a literary journal published in London and founded by William Cookson. ... Faber and Faber is a celebrated publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing the poetry of T. S. Eliot. ...

In 2002 the text of three short poems was published for the first time in Wedding Poems, edited by Thomas Dilworth. Two of these poems ("Prothalamion" and "Epithalamion", amounting to 271 lines) had been written while living in London during the Blitz, for the marriage of Harman and Margaret Grisewood. The third poem, "The Brenner" (24 lines), had been written on March 18th 1940 to mark the meeting of Mussolini and Hitler on the Brenner Pass. According to their editor, the publication of these poems brought into print "all the known completed poetry by David Jones". In ancient Greece an epithalamion was composed to honor a newlywed couple. ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ... Heinkel He 111 German bomber over the Surrey Docks, Southwark, London (German propaganda photomontage) The Blitz was the sustained bombing of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941. ... Benito Mussolini created a fascist state through the use of propaganda, total control of the media and disassembly of the working democratic government. ... Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945, standard German pronunciation in the IPA) was the Führer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. ... The Brenner Pass (Italian Passo del Brennero) is a mountain pass that creates a link through the Tyrolean Alps along the current border between the nations of Austria and Italy, one of the principal passes of the Alps. ...

Jones the Essayist

Jones wrote a number of essays on questions of art, literature, religion and history. He wrote introductions for a few books such as a new edition of George Borrow's Wild Wales; he gave radio talks on the BBC's Third Programme; he even tried his hand at an extended consideration of Coleridge's poem for a reprinting of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner featuring his own illustrations. These efforts were published in two collections, Epoch and Artist (Faber and Faber, 1959) and The Dying Gaul--another posthumous volume edited by a dear friend and published by Faber and Faber in 1978. The best summary of David Jones' attitude to art and religion is contained in his essay, 'Art and Sacrament' (included in Epoch and Artist), which explores the meaning of signs and symbols in everyday life, relates them to Roman Catholic teachings such as the dogma of transubstantiation, and argues that human beings are the only animals which create 'gratuitous' works, thus making them creators analogous to God. George Borrow George Henry Borrow (1803-1881) was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his own experiences around Europe. ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ...

External links

• David Jones Web Site