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Blackfriars from 1924 to 1934
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Extract
In a letter to Fr Bede Jarrett, dated 17 July 1925, Basil Blackwell refers to the financial instability of Blackfriars, this journal, which he had published since 1922: ‘The policy of safety, no doubt, is to cease publication at the end of this volume’ — volume VI.
On his father’s death, in 1924, Basil Blackwell, then aged thirty five, took over the bookshop in Oxford. At this distance, it looks as if he decided to focus on building up the bookshop, rather than the publishing house he had founded in 1921. Not until the 1950s did his become a significant name in academic publishing, with such books as Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention, a classic as it turned out, never out of print. By then, Blackwell’s was the leading academic bookshop in the United Kingdom.
According to the letter asking Bernard Delany to resume the editorship, Fr Bede says that Basil Blackwell had come to regard Blackfriars as ‘little more than respectable’, whereas he expected it to be ‘fresh, daring and sane’ when he took on the job of publishing it.
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References
1 See Fergus Kerr OP, ‘The First Issue’, New Blackfriars October 2003: 434-447
2 Vivien Greene died on 1 August 2003, aged ninety-nine; though his infidelities meant that they ceased to live together in the 1940s, Greene refused her offer of divorce; he left everything to her and their children at his death.
3 Henry VI (1421-1471), King of England, a deeply religious man who spent much time on retreat in religious houses, etc., was not a successful ruler; having fallen into a ‘depressive stupor’ (Cross and Livingstone), though not before founding Eton College and King’s College Cambridge, he was mistreated by the Yorkist party, replaced by Edward IV in 1461, imprisoned in the Tower of London for years, murdered on 21 May 1471 in the presence of the future King Richard III; his tomb was a place of pilgrimage from the outset; Henry VII (not his son, murdered on 4 May 1471) petitioned Pope Innocent VIII and then Pope Alexander VI for his canonization.
4 The Paston Letters reveal a great deal about the reign of Henry V1.
5 Reginald Ginns (1893-1987), just returned from studying at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem; taught Scripture to young Dominicans until 1938; served as an RAF chaplain during World War II; did not settle to academic life thereafter; moved to Stone, Staffordshire, in 1959, as chaplain to the Dominican Sisters, remaining there for the rest of his life.
6 David Jones (1895-1974), poet and artist; became Catholic 1921; published among much else In Parenthesis (1937) and The Anathemata (1952): ‘very probably the greatest long poem in English in this century’ (W. H. Auden).
7 When the Vatican admonished priests not to mix in politics Sturzo took the hint, moved to Britain and from there, in 1941, to Florida.
8 Henry Bugeja OP (1885-1957), joined the Order in Malta in 1900, came to England in 1921 and stayed for the rest of his life.
9 Younger son of Hermann Raffalovich, a wealthy banker who left Odessa during anti-Jewish legislation in Russia to begin again in Paris, and his wife Marie, also from Odessa, who lived in Ireland after her husband’s death with her daughter Sophie (1860-1960). wife of the Irish nationalist leader and Member of Parliament, William O’Brien (1853-1928); Raffalovich was sent to Oxford in 1884 but health prevented him from matriculating; wealth allowed him access to literary and artistic circles in London; published poems, Cyril and Lionel and other poems 1884, Tuberose and meadow sweet 1885, etc. (Oscar Wilde: ‘To say of these poems that they are unhealthy and bring with them the heavy odour of the hot-house is to point out neither their defect nor their merit, but their quality merely’); he and John Gray were already friends, collaborating in literary ventures; in 1896 Raffalovich published Uranisme et Unisexualité. an extremely rare book, ‘restricted’ in Bodley, remembered if at all for the reminiscences of Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas rather than the contribution to understanding homosexuality, in the context of medicine, psychology and criminology; received into the Church at Farm Street; settled in Edinburgh in 1905; was instrumental in building St Peter’s Morningside.
10 Park was republished in 1966 by Saint Albert’s Press, Aylesford, with an introduction by Bernard Bergonzi and again in 1984 by Carcanet, Manchester, with an introduction by Philip Healy; for John Gray see Brocard, Sewell, In the Dorian Mode: A Life of John Gray 1866-1934 (Tabb House, Padstow 1983)Google Scholar; Jerusha, Hull McCormack, John Gray Poet, Dandy, & Priest (Brandeis University Press 1991)Google Scholar and The Man Who Was Dorian Gray (Palgrave 2000).
11 Thomas Gilby (1902-1975),having gained the Ph.D. at the Higher Institute of Philosophy in Louvain with a dissertation entitled ‘The Fortunate Man: An Enquiry into the Place of the Appetite in Real Knowledge of the Concrete’, was teaching moral theology at Blackfriars, Oxford.
12 The other two: the flurry in 1920 over Vincent McNabb’s friendly remarks about the Church of England (as noted last month), and the dismissal of Herbert McCabe in 1967 for agreeing with Charles Davis (who had just left the Catholic Church) that the Church is indeed ‘cormpt’ - arguing however that this is no reason for leaving.
13 Hilary John Carpenter (1896-1973) graduated B.Litt. at Oxford in 1926; taught philosophy and theology in the Dominican study house 1926-40; editor 1934-40, chaplain in the Royal Air Force; Prior Provincial 1946-58.
14 Jacobin: French Dominican friar, from priory of Saint Jacques in Paris; democratic club at French Revolution meeting in the former Dominican priory; sympathizer with democratic principles; extreme radical; pigeon with reversed feathers on back of neck, suggesting cowl.
15 Karl Thieme (1902-1963), then a young lecturer, became a Catholic in 1934, had to emigrate to Switzerland in 1935; after the War he devoted himself to work for Christian-Jewish understanding.
16 For the story until 1996 see Allan White OP, ‘A History of Blackfriars and New Blackfriars’, New Blackfriars July/August 1996: 320-333.