Lehman, Rudolph John Frederick

(1907-1987)

   Known as John, he was born at Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Eton College, then read English at Trinity College, Cambridge. When he returned to England after working as a journalist and poet in Vienna from 1932 to 1936, he founded and edited the book-periodical New Writing. It ran under various titles until 1950 and published, among others, the works of W.H. Auden (see entry) and Christopher Isherwood. Lehmann was general manager of the Hogarth Press from 1938 to 1946 and advisory editor of The Geographical Magazine from 1940 to 1945. He and his sister, the novelist Rosamond Lehmann, directed the publishing firm of John Lehmann Ltd. from 1946 to 1953. In 1954 he founded and edited (until 1961) The London Magazine, a literary review, publishing new works by authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre and discovering talents like Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee (see entries). His three-part autobiography was published in one volume in the United States in 1969 as In My Own Time. He died in London. Some of his poems: "A Death in Hospital," "The Ballad of Banners (1944)," "The Last Ascent," "The Sphere of Glass."

   Sources: A Little Book of Comfort. Anthony Guest, ed. HarperCollins, 1993. Collected Poems of John Lehmann. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Modern Ballads and Story Poems. Charles Causley, ed. Franklin Watts, 1965. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Portraits of Poets. Sebastian Barker, ed. Carcanet, 1986. The Chatto Book of Modern Poetry 1915-1955. Cecil Day Lewis and John Lehmann, eds. Chatto and Windus, 1966. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Modern Poets: An American-British Antholog y. John Malcom Brinnin and Bill Read, eds. McGraw-Hill, 1963.