Biographer
Richard Aldington
Voltaire
London, Routledge, 1929
Aldington’s first biography, and the first volume in Routledge’s The Republic of Letters series, was published in 1925. The second revised impression is shown. On the front cover, there are extracts from reviews of the first edition.
Richard Aldington
The Duke: Being an Account of the Life and Achievements of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
New York: Viking Press, 1943
Written for Viking in lieu of a new novel, which Aldington felt unable to write, the biography was timely and well-received, and the U.K. edition won The James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography for 1946. This copy is inscribed by Aldington.
Richard Aldington
Four English Portraits 1801-1951
London, Evans Brothers, 1948
Short portraits of Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Prince Regent, later King George IV, and Charles Waterton, the naturalist.
Richard Aldington
The Strange Life of Charles Waterton
London, Evans Brothers, 1949
A full-length biography of Charles Waterton (1780-1865), the eccentric Yorkshire naturalist and early environmentalist who built a wall around his estate three miles long and nine feet high to create a nature reserve. Aldington had been fascinated by natural history since he was a child, and he remained a keen lepidopterist throughout his life.
Richard Aldington
Portrait of a Genius, But…: The Life of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
London, Heinemann, 1950
This copy is inscribed to Carl & Flo [Fallas], friends of Aldington in pre-WWI London. Aldington and Fallas enlisted together in the Devonshire Regiment in 1916. Aldington had had a brief affair with Flo shortly before enlisting.
Richard Aldington
Pinorman: Personal Reminiscences of Norman
Douglas, Pino Orioli and Charles Prentice
London, Heinemann, 1954
Intended to be affectionate memories of his friends during Aldington’s stays in Florence and tours of Italy in the early 1930s, publication of this book roused Nancy Cunard, in particular, to fury by revealing Douglas’s sexual habits. Cunard’s own memoir of Douglas (Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas, Secker & Warburg) was published later in the same year. The initials “CLS” on the dust jacket refer to the Canterbury Literary Society.
Richard Aldington
Introduction to Mistral
London, William Heinemann, 1956
This biography of Frédéric Mistral, the nineteenth-century Provençal poet, enabled Aldington to express his love for Provence. Aldington was awarded the Prix de Gratitude Mistralienne by the Museon Arlaten in Arles for this work.
Richard Aldington
Frauds
London, Heinemann, 1957
A study of a variety of British fraudsters ranging from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. It is notable that the blurb on the dust jacket does not mention Aldington’s biography of Lawrence of Arabia.
Richard Aldington
Portrait of a Rebel: The Life and Work of Robert Louis Stevenson
London, Evans Bros., 1957
Written as an antidote to the Lawrence of Arabia controversy, this was the last biography published by Aldington and was generally well-received. The long biography of Aldington on the back inside flap of the dust jacket does mention his Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry.
