Critic
He reviewed for the Westminster Gazatte and then the Times Literary Supplement, from 1912. Initially he was much influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, which he disavowed in 1913.
He was one of an identified group of post-World War I critics that included Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Aldous Huxley, Herbert Read, and Edgell Rickword. Murry gave Huxley an editorial job at The Athenaeum.
Murry led the charge against Georgian poetry. A leader in the 16 May 1919 edition of The Athenaeum was an early example of a reasoned attack against the Georgian style of verse; and Murry coupled this with an adversarial attitude to the London Mercury edited by J. C. Squire. He reviewed quite harshly Siegfried Sassoon's Counter-Attack in 1918, despite having helped him in 1917 to draft an anti-war piece for H. W. Massingham's The Nation. In-house, however, he was not master enough to award an essay competition prize to the then-unknown Herbert Read, over the wishes of George Saintsbury and Robert Bridges, who preferred the poet William Orton.
F. R. Leavis admired and was influenced by Murry's early criticism. Later he was to attack Murry viciously, in the pages of Scrutiny.
Read more about this topic: John Middleton Murry
Famous quotes containing the word critic:
“Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music—his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting—that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.”
—Théophile Gautier (1811–1872)
“The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)