Rayner Heppenstall facts for kids

John Rayner Heppenstall (born July 27, 1911, in Lockwood, Huddersfield, England – died May 23, 1981, in Deal, Kent, England) was a British writer. He wrote novels and poems, kept diaries, and worked as a radio producer for the BBC.

Early Life and Friends

John Heppenstall studied English and Modern Languages at the University of Leeds. He finished his studies in 1932. For a short time, he worked as a teacher in Dagenham.

In 1934, he moved to London and quickly started meeting people in the writing world. He wrote a short book about another writer, John Middleton Murry. This led him to work as a cook for a while at Murry's "Adelphi" community in 1935. That same year, he met the famous poet Dylan Thomas.

Heppenstall became friends with George Orwell, another well-known writer. They first met in 1935. Heppenstall later wrote about Orwell in his memoir, Four Absentees. For a time, Heppenstall, Orwell, and an Irish poet named Michael Sayers shared a flat in London.

In 1937, John Heppenstall got married to Margaret Edwards. They had two children, Adam and Lindy. During World War II, he served in the British Army. He was stationed in places like Reading, Berkshire and Northern Ireland.

Heppenstall once said that he used to have left-wing political views, but later became more conservative. He greatly admired writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov.

As a Novelist

John Heppenstall's first novel, The Blaze of Noon (1939), was very well-received by critics. Years later, in 1967, it even won an award from the Arts Council. He really liked French literature and writers.

Some critics have said his writing style was similar to a French style called nouveau roman, or "new novel." This style was experimental and different from traditional novels. Heppenstall is sometimes seen as a writer who was ahead of his time in this way. He is sometimes grouped with other British writers who also experimented with their writing, like Anthony Burgess and Angela Carter. His novel The Connecting Door (1962) is a good example of this style.

Heppenstall was also influenced by a writer named Raymond Roussel, and he even translated Roussel's book Impressions of Africa. Other novels he wrote include The Shearers, Two Moons, and The Pier. He also wrote a short book about the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy.

His book The Fourfold Tradition was praised by the writer V. S. Pritchett, who liked how much Heppenstall enjoyed literature.

Radio Work

From 1945 to 1965, John Heppenstall worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio. He wrote and produced radio features, which are like documentaries or special programs. For two more years, he worked as a drama producer, creating radio plays. Other poets like Louis MacNeice and W R Rodgers also worked in the same department.

One of his early projects was adapting George Orwell's famous book Animal Farm for radio in 1947. Heppenstall's journals mention some disagreements he had with the writer Evelyn Waugh about a radio broadcast in the 1940s.

Later Years

Later in his life, John Heppenstall moved to the town of Deal, Kent. After he passed away, his personal journals were published. These journals caused some discussion because they showed his strong opinions about other writers and groups of people.

Works

• Middleton Murry: A Study in Excellent Normality (1934)
• First Poems (1935)
• Apology for Dancing (1936) ballet
• Sebastian: New Poetry (1937)
• Poems (1938) with Lawrence Durrell, Ruthven Todd, Patrick Evans, Edgar Foxall, and Oswell Blakeston
• The Blaze of Noon (1939) novel
• Blind Men's Flowers Are Green (1940) poetry
• Saturnine (1943) novel, reissued as The Greater Infortune (1960)
• Poems, 1933–1945 (poems) (1946)
• The Double Image: Mutations of Christian Mythology in the Work of Four French Catholic Writers of To-Day and Yesterday (1947)
• Imaginary Conversations: Eight Radio Scripts (1948)
• Three Tales of Hamlet (1950) with Michael Innes
• The Lesser Infortune (1953) novel
• Léon Bloy (1953)
• My Bit of Dylan Thomas (1957)
• Architecture of Truth: The Cistercian Abbey of Le Thoronnet in Provence (1957)
• Four Absentees: Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, Eric Gill, J. Middleton Murry (1960)
• The Fourfold Tradition: Notes on the French and English Literatures, with Some Ethnological and Historical Asides (1961)
• The Woodshed (1962)
• The Connecting Door (1962)
• The Intellectual Part: An Autobiography (1963)
• Raymond Roussel: A Critical Study (1966)
• The Shearers (1969)
• A Little Pattern of French Crime (1969)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Professional Man (1969)
• French Crime in the Romantic Age (1970)
• Bluebeard and After: Three Decades of Murder in France (1972)
• London Consequences (1972) with Margaret Drabble, B. S. Johnson, Eva Figes, Gillian Freeman, Jane Gaskell, Wilson Harris, Olivia Manning, Adrian Mitchell, Paul Ableman, John Bowen, Melvyn Bragg, Vincent Brome, Peter Buckman, Alan Burns, Barry Cole, Julian Mitchell, Andrea Newman, Piers Paul Read and Stefan Themerson.
• Reflections on the "Newgate Calendar" (1975)
• Two Moons (1977)
• Tales from the "Newgate Calendar" (1981)
• The Master Eccentric: The Journals of Rayner Heppenstall, 1969–1981, ed. Jonathan Goodman (London and New York, Allison & Busby, 1986), 278 pp.
• The Pier (1986)

Critical Studies

• Buckell, G. J. (2007). Heppenstall – A Critical Study (DAP).