Poetry of the Thirties

Nov 25, 2025 9:47 PM

Author:Robin Skelton

Auden, Day, Lewis, Spender, MacNeice and the other key poets of the Thirties were children of the First World War, obsessed by war and by communalism, by the class-struggle and a passionate belief in poets as people whose actions are as publically important as their poems.For them, the Spanish Civil War epitomized the mood of the times, as their symbolic obsessions were transmuted into tragic reality. But from within their strongly defined unity of ideals, an astonishingly varied body of poetry emerged.

Robin Skelton has arranged the poetry to make an illuminating ‘critical essay’ of the period, and in his introduction he brilliantly probes the moods and mores of an intensely troubled and creative decade.

Reviews

A work of art

—— Irish Times

Gemmell is several rungs above the good - right into the fabulous

—— Anne McCaffrey

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—— R. A. Salvatore, author of Mortalis

Gemmell is very talented; his characters are vivid and very convincingly realistic

—— Christopher Stasheff, author of the Wizard of Rhyme novels

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—— Simon Callow , Vogue

'Wonderful, funny, poignant and gutsy...you can feel the author's huge and hurt and loving heart beat on every page'

—— Anne Lamott , Mademoiselle

'An intensely enjoyable novel about friendship and prejudice: the dialogue is word perfect, the psycology laser fine, and there are some terrific jokes... but no synopsis can do justice to this glorious book'

—— David Profumo , Weekend Telegraph

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