Bonamy Dobree

Date of birth:

02 Feb 1891

City of birth:

London

Country of birth:

England

Date of death:

03 Sep 1974

Location of death:

London

Location:

East London College, University of London (lecturer, 1925-6); The Egyptian University, Cairo (Professor of English, 1926-9); University of Leeds (Chair of English Literature, 1936-55); City University, London (Gresham Professor in Rhetoric, 1955-6).

About:

Bonamy Dobrée was a literary scholar and university teacher, best known for his works on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama. In 1925-6, he taught at London University, and he became Professor of English at University of Leeds in 1936. He was educated and trained as a professional soldier, and fought with distinction during the First World War [1]. He is also famous as a Kipling critic.

During his lectureship in London, Dobrée became a part of the Bloomsbury Group. He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot [2], whom he met in 1924 in Leonard Woolf [3]’s house in Richmond, and with whom he regularly met up for lunches in London. The two men shared a love for Kipling as an artist, and in 1926 Eliot commissioned him to write an essay on Kipling for the Criterion. Among Dobrée’s other friends was Herbert Read [4], with whom he collaborated to edit The London Book of English Prose (1931) and English Verse (1949).

Dobrée was, in Richard Hoggard’s words, a ‘teacher and patron of young men’. Mulk Raj Anand [5], in his Conversations in Bloomsbury, presents a similar picture. Anand met Dobrée through his fellow student Nikhil Sen [6] shortly after his arrival in London in 1925. Anand records a lively conversation he had with Dobrée, Sen and Gwenda Zeidmann in Museum Tavern, and a relaxing evening together with Dobrée, his wife Valentine, Sen, and Irene Rhys at Francis Meynall’s flat in the summer of 1926. In 1925, Dobrée introduced Anand to T. S. Eliot [2], and helped him to set up a meeting with the poet. He proved to be a good friend and mentor, despite the fact that his views on British India and admiration of Kipling occasionally offended Anand.

Connections:

Ahmed Ali [7], Mulk Raj Anand [5], Clive Bell [8], Francis Birrell, Jean Cocteau, Valentine Dobrée, T. S. Eliot [2], E. M. Forster [9], Aldous Huxley [10], Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence [11], Wyndham Lewis, Louis MacNeice [12], Francis Meynall, Harold Monro [13], Alfred Richard Orage [14], Ezra Pound, Ananda Vittal Rao, Herbert Read [4], Irene Rhys, Nikhil Sen [6], George Bernard Shaw [15], Leonard Woolf [3], Virginia Woolf [16], Gwenda Zeidmann.

Kipling Society (Vice-President)

Network:

Mulk Raj Anand [17]

Involved in events:

First World War [1]

Published works:

Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924)

Essays in Biography, 1680-1726 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1925)

(ed.) Comedies of Congreve, The World’s Classics (London: H. Milford, 1925)

Histriophone: A Dialogue on Dramatic Diction (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925)

Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1925)

Rochester: A Conversation between Sir George Etherege and Mr. Fitzjames (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1926)

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (London: Gerald Howe, 1927)

(ed. with Geoffrey Webb) The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1927-8)

Restoration Tragedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

The Lamp and the Lute: Studies in Six Modern Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

Essays of the Year (1929-1930) (London: Argonaut, 1930)

(ed. with Herbert Read) The London Book of English Prose (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1931)

Variety of Ways: Discussions on Six Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932)

(ed.) The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1932)

Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (London: Peter Davies, 1933)

As Their Friends Saw Them: Biographical Conversations (London: Cape, 1933)

John Wesley (London: Duckworth, 1933)

Modern Prose Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934)

(with G. E. Manwaring) The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 (London: Geoffry Bles, 1935; Penguin, 1937)

(ed.) The Letters of King George III (London: Cassell & Co., 1935)

English Revolts (London: Herbert Joseph, 1937)

(ed.) From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands (London: Cassell & Co., 1937)

The Unacknowledged Legislator: Conversation on Literature and Politics in a Warden’s Post, 1941 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942)

Arts’ Faculties in Modern Universities (Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son, 1944)

(with Herbert Read) London Book of English Verse (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949)

Alexander Pope (London: Sylvan Press, 1951)

The Broken Cistern (London: Cohen & West, 1954)

John Dryden (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956)

(ed. with Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin) New Poems, 1958 (London: Michael Joseph, 1958)

English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959)

(ed.) Algernon Charles Swinburne: Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961)

Three Eighteenth Century Figures: Sarah Churchill, John Wesley, Giacomo Casanova (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)

(ed.) Shakespeare: The Writer and his Work (London: Longmans, 1964)

Rudyard Kipling: Realist and Fabulist (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)

Milton to Ouida: A Collection of Essays (London: Cass, 1970)

Contributions to periodicals:

Egoist (‘Impression’, 3.6, 1 June 1916, p. 95)

Egoist (‘Court-Martial’, 3.7, 1 July 1916, p. 111)

New Statesman [18] (‘Drama and Values’, 14.344, 1919, pp. 161-2)

Nation and Athenaeum (‘Young Voltaire: A Conversation between William Congreve and Alexander Pope, Twickenham, September 1726’, 15.5, 1926, pp. 179-80)

New Criterion (‘The World of Dean Inge’, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 109-14)

New Criterion (review of Rudyard Kipling, Debits and Credits, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 149-51)

Monthly Criterion (review of Wyndham Lewis, The Lion and the Fox, 5.3, June 1927, pp. 339-43)

Monthly Criterion (‘Rudyard Kipling’, 6.6, December 1927, pp. 499-515)

Monthly Criterion (review of D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away, 8.30, September 1928, pp. 139-41)

Spectator (review of Leonard Woolf, After the Deluge, 147.5393, 7 November 1931)

Spectator (review of Sacheverell Sitwell, Spanish Baroque Art, 147.5378, 25 July 1931, pp. 132-3)

Spectator (‘Travel in Egypt’, 29 October 1932, p. 592)

Criterion (review of Col. P. G. Elgood, Bonaparte’s Adventure in Egypt, 11.44, April 1932, pp. 557-60)

Criterion (‘Macaulay’, 12.49, July 1933, pp. 593-604)

Spectator (‘Mr. Bernard Shaw’, 152.5512, 16 February 1934)

Spectator (‘The Shavian Situation’, 153.5533, 1934, p. 46)

Criterion (review of Ananda Vittal Rao, A Minor Augustan, 14.55, January 1935)

ELH (‘Milton and Dryden: A Comparison and Contrast in Poetic Ideas and Poetic Method’, 3.1, March 1936, pp. 83-100)

Southern Review (‘The Plays of Eugene O'Neill’, 2, 1937, pp. 435-46)

Criterion (review of T. H. Wintringham, Mutiny, 14.64, April 1937, p. 573)

Spectator (review of Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi, 165.5863, 8 November 1940)

Spectator (review of Mulk Raj Anand, Across the Black Waters, 165.5865, 22 November 1940)

Spectator ('Virginia Woolf: Her Art as a Novelist', 174.6088, 2 March 1945)

Sewanee Review (‘Mr. O’Neill’s Last Play’, 56, 1948, pp. 118-26)

Sewanee Review (‘The Confidential Clerk, by T. S. Eliot’, 62, 1954, pp. 117-31)

Sewanee Review (‘The London Stage’, review of T. S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman, 67, 1959, pp. 109-17)

Sewanee Review (‘Durrell’s Alexandrian Series’, 69, 1961, pp. 61-79)

Kipling Journal (‘Rudyard Kipling: Poet’, 32.156, 1965, pp. 33-41)

Sewanee Review (‘T. S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence’, 74.1, January - March 1966, pp. 85-108)

Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review (‘W. H. Auden’, 18.2, 1967, pp. 18-22)

Malahat Review: An International Quarterly of Life and Letters (‘The Poems of Thomas Hardy: Lyric or Elegiac?’, 3, 1967, pp. 77-92)

Malahat Review (with Herbert Read, ‘Beauty - or the Beast! A Conversation in a Tavern’, 1969, pp. 178-86)

Reviews:

The Times, 19 August 1925, p. 10

Richard Aldington, New Criterion 4.2, April 1926, pp. 381-4 (Restoration Comedy: 1660-1720; Essays in Biography, 1680-1726; Comedies of Congreve; Histriophone; Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre)

Mario Praz, Criterion 8.30, September 1928, pp. 153-6 (The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh)

Sherard Vines, Criterion 11.44, April 1932, pp. 529-32 (The London Book of English Prose)

Williard Thorp, Criterion 11.45, July 1932, pp. 749-51 (Variety of Ways: Discussion of Six Authors)

Keith Feiling, Criterion 12.46, October 1932, pp. 118-21 (The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope)

M. A., Criterion 13.50, October 1933, p. 172 (Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt)

T. C. Wilson, Criterion 14.55, January 1935, pp. 337-40 (Modern Prose Style)

John Garrett, Criterion 15.59, January 1936, pp. 137-9 (The Floating Republic)

Michael de la Bedoyere, Criterion 15.60, April 1936 (The Letters of King George III)

Secondary works:

Butt, John (ed.) Of Books and Humankind: Essays and Poems presented to Bonamy Dobrée (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964)

Morrish, P. S., ‘Bonamy Dobrée, Theatre Critic of The Nation & Athenaeum’, Notes and Queries 29 (1982), pp. 344-5

Sherbo, Arthur, ‘Restoring Bonamy Dobrée: Additions to the Canon of His Writings’, Notes and Queries 49(247).1 (March 2002), pp. 96-7

Example:

Mulk Raj Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury (Delhi: OUP, 1995), p. 50

Content:

Anand met Bonamy Dobrée and T. S. Eliot for lunch in the Etoile.

Extract:

‘I don’t agree with defiance of law,’ Eliot said. ‘The British have done much good in India.’

I looked at him, then bent my head down. After a while, Dobrée said: ‘That is what I have told this rebel. Look at the unity we have given you. And the railways.’

I was perspiring under the collar, through the humiliation of having been flogged by the police. I had been cultivating the will to decide on the struggle against, what Gandhi called, the satanic British.

And now I wanted, even through my bluff and bluster, to cultivate the vision of freedom for India – freedom against all the enemies, the family, the brotherhood, the stupid lazy people and the conformists.

‘I am going to rewrite Kipling’s Kim,’ I said at last, ‘from the opposite point of view.’

‘Some hopes!’ Dobrée said.

He sensed my discomfiture and offered us more coffee.

Relevance:

The extract gives insights into Dobrée’s relationship with Mulk Raj Anand, and his views of the place of India in the British empire and of Indian nationalism.

Archive source:

Papers of Professor Bonamy Dobrée, Leeds University Library Special Collections

Correspondence, Hogarth Press Archives, University of Reading

Correspondence, King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge University