Campbell and the Romance Countries

Roy Campbell (1901-1957) is South Africa's most famous poet, and the lyrics he wrote in and about his home country have received most critical attention and praise. However, a revaluation of the later poems written in France, Spain and Portugal - each of which, in turn, became his adopted home country - is overdue. The first three of the new essays collected here offer biographical insights into what may well have been the most exciting life of any poet of the twentieth century. They are intended as an introduction to the critical discussion of Campbell's poetological poetry, his diction, and the interpretations of such brilliant, but unfairly neglected masterpieces as"Horses on the Camargue","Choosing a Mast","After the Horse-fair","San Juan de la Cruz", and"Luis de Camões". The essays amount to an endorsement of Charles Causley's statement that Campbell"at his best produced a body of lyric poems that are among the finest of those written in English". The book is rounded off witha contribution of special interest: Teresa Campbell's eye-witness account of her father's life in Toledo up to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.