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Hi Visitor
You and a partner are invited to the launch of
REMEMBERING ROY CAMPBELL : the MEMOIRS of his DAUGHTERS , ANNA AND TESS
edited by Judith Lutge Coullie , Professor of English Literature , UKZN
Date :Wed 10 AUGUST 2011 , 5.30 for 6.00 pm
Venue : Seabrookes Coffee Shop , Durban High School , St.Thomas’ Road .
Guest speaker : Michael Chapman .
ph Cedric 082 873 2702 .
Price : R220.00
Never swimming in the shallow end, the Campbell family experienced first-hand the aesthetic, political and social upheavals of the twentieth century.
Teresa Campbell was born in 1922 in Wales, in a drafty, dilapidated cottage-cum-stable. She was the firstborn child of the handsome young South African poet and writer, Roy Campbell (1901-1957), and his strikingly beautiful English wife, Mary Garman (1898-1979). The birthplace of her sister, Anna, could not have been more different: she was born at Sezela on the sub-tropical Natal South Coast in 1926. In their frank and moving memoirs, published together in one volume, Anna and Tess recall the extraordinary, and often very difficult, lives they shared with their exceptional parents. Their memoirs offer an intimate and sometimes raw glimpse into their lives. Tess and Anna do not shy away from the controversies that dogged their parents: Roy’s virulent attack on the colonial mentality in Durban in the 1920s; Mary’s affair with Vita Sackville-West; Roy’s drinking; their support for Franco in the Spanish Civil War and subsequent work for the Allied War Effort…. Nor do Tess and Anna evade the sorrows that tainted their own lives; Tess confides in readers, telling us about the eating disorder and depression that almost cost her her life, and Anna alludes to the numerous breakdowns she suffered. Since their very accomplished father, Roy Campbell, selectively evaded mention of much of his private life and embellished on other aspects in his own autobiographies, in Remembering Roy Campbell his daughters allow readers to get behind their father’s bragging and bombast to see the gifted yet troubled man who put South African poetry on the global stage forthe first time.
ENDORSEMENTS
“Roy Campbell was a great poet but he was also a great man, in the sense that he was larger than life. Finding oneself in his company is to find oneself intoxicated with the pure pleasure of his presence. One would like to meet him in the flesh, perhaps in that tavern at the world’s end that Chesterton mentions, in which we will meet “Dickens and all his characters”. In the absence of such a celestial rendezvous, this journey through Campbell’s life in the terrestrial presence of his daughters is pleasure enough.”
Joseph Pearce, author of Bloomsbury and Beyond: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell
“Campbell’s daughters have the huge advantage of having grown up with him and having the partial but intense knowledge that a child has of a loved parent. Their accounts are unique and irreplaceable. The two narratives function well together, shedding more light on Campbell’s life than either would do on its own. Remembering Roy Campbell makes a significant contribution to understanding South Africa’s best-known poet.”
Peter F. Alexander, author of Roy Campbell: A Critical Biography
“The editor’s introduction to the two memoirs serves as a further corrective to erroneous assumptions about Campbell’s life and poetry and offers a balanced assessment of the reliability, intentions – and in Anna Campbell’s case – the partisanship of the memoirs of his daughters. Campbell’s religious beliefs and political activities (with regard to the South African colour bar, the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing writers of the British literary establishment of the 1930s) are outlined and may thus serve as a background against which the memoirs may be read.”
Michael Hanke, author of Roy Campbell, Ein Solitar: Interpretationen Seiner Versdichtun
Look forward to seeing you Wed 10 August . please feel free to forward this invite .
Forwarded by Chris Sparks
On behalf of Cedric Sissing
ph Cedric 082 873 2702 .
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