Golding, Louis

(1895-1958)

   English novelist, poet and essayist, was the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents from Cherkassy. Golding grew up in Manchester and attended Manchester Grammar School and Queen's College, Oxford. World War I-in which he fought in the Salonika campaign-interrupted his studies. After graduating from Oxford he traveled widely in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. His novel Magnolia Street (1932)- a story of working-class life among Jews and Gentiles in a Manchester back street-was produced as a play in 1934. His book The Jewish Problem (1938) was a study of antiSemitism. A broadcaster and lecturer, he also wrote film scripts (he worked on the screenplay of the Paul Robeson 1940 film The Proud Valley), verse, short stories, and books on boxing. His five-volume series Tales of the Silver Sisters, also known as the Doomington Saga (1934-1954), are novels that examine twentieth-century Jewish life in Western Europe. His poetry publications: Sorrow of War, 1919. Shepherd Singing Ragtime, 1921. Prophet and Fool, 1923. Some of his poems: "Broken Bodies," "Doomdevoted," "Ploughman at the Plough," "Quarries in Syracuse," "Second Seeing."

   Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Louis Golding, Collection Description. Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA (http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/manuscripts/mlc/golding/golding.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Our Holidays in Poetry. Mildred P. Harrington and Josephine H. Thomas, ed. H.W. Wilson, 1929. Poetry of the First World War. Edward Hudson, ed. Wayland Publishers Ltd., 1988. Poets' Corner: Ploughman at the Plough by Louis Golding (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/golding1.html). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia).