www.robertgraves.org

[notarius]

"Norman Cameron's name is associated with four key figures in modern poetry: W.H. Auden, Robert Graves, Laura Riding and Dylan Thomas. He was a close friend of all except Auden, an admirer of his work who published him in Oxford Poetry. When Cameron died in 1953 at the age of forty-eight Dylan Thomas read his friend's poems in a Greenwich Village bar to 'a remarkably appreciative audience' of 'truck drivers, longshoremen, painters, sculptors, and writers'; Robert Graves and Laura Riding had been estranged from one another for over a decade, though both would continue to speak warmly of the tall Scot who had briefly shared their Majorcan life."

So writes David Cameron in a review of American poet and critic Warren Hope's critical biography of Norman Cameron, published in 2000 and "based on exhaustive interviews with everyone Cameron knew: James Reeves, Tosco Fyvel, Geoffrey Grigson. Martin Seymour-Smith, John Aldridge, Cameron's widow, and many more." This fascinating and informative review of the biography is available online, in PDF, at http://www.star.ac.uk/darkhorse/archive/OnNormanCameron.pdf. The review was first publsihed in The Dark Horse, Wnter 2001-2002, pp. 112-117.



The biography tells for the first time the story of Cameron's troubled life: his relationships with Robert Graves, with the "truly fearsome" Laura Riding, with Dylan Thomas, and others.

Robert Graves's biographer Martin Seymour-Smith wrote of Cameron and this biography, "The poetry of Norman Cameron (1905-1953) has given delight without exception. Auden, who anthologised him while they were both still at Oxford, thought him the best poet of his generation. He never changed his mind. Though sometimes thought of as "school of Robert Graves", Cameron had in fact - as his close friend Graves was always eager to point out - formed his unique style long before he met Graves. He has for long been a pervasive influence on modern English poetry, and yet until now there has been no biography."

The bibliographic details of the book are:

Norman Cameron:His Life, Work and Letters
by Warren Hope
Greenwich Exchange, London, 2000; ISBN 1-871551-05-6; £15.00
www.greenex.co.uk

Further details of the book are available at the publsher's website at http://www.greenex.co.uk/biography/cameron.html.

Order it here from Amazon.co.uk or here from Amazon.com, or click here to check its availbility in your market via AddAll.com. (NB: To change settings to those for your delivery address, use the form at the bottom of the AddAll.com page and click the box marked "Redisplay results".)

This book should make an interesting addition to the growing number of biographical accounts of Graves and Riding's 'inner circle'.

Patrick