John Davys Beresford (17 March 1873 – 2 February 1947) was an English writer, now remembered mainly for his early science fiction and some short stories of the horror story and ghost story genres. Beresford was a great admirer of H. G. Wells, and wrote the first critical study of Wells in 1915.[1] His Wellsian novel The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911) was a major influence for the author Olaf Stapledon.[2] His other science-fiction novels include The Riddle of the Tower, about a dystopian, hive-like society.[3]
After training to become an architect, he became a professional writer, first as a dramatist, and journalist. During early adulthood, he rejected his father's theism and became a "determined but defensive" agnostic.[8] In 1903 Beresford read the book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by the psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers, which Beresford later stated had an enormous influence on his thought.[9] He combined a life in Edwardian literary London with time spent in the provinces, in particular Cornwall, where D. H. Lawrence had an extended stay in his Porthcothan cottage. During the period around the First World War Beresford befriended several British writers, including Dorothy Richardson, Walter de la Mare, Naomi Royde-Smith and May Sinclair.[9] Later in life Beresford abandoned his earlier agnosticism and described himself as a Theosophist and a pacifist.[6]
Beresford's interest with spiritualism and philosophy may be illustrated best by the publisher's notes to his novel, On A Huge Hill:
"Mr Beresford's readers have long known that that for him there are more things in heaven or earth than are dreamt of in official medical philosophy. He has used his novelist's skill to convince the sensitive reader that the age of miracles is not over, and that, in certain circumstances, the spirit may exercise what seem to us miraculous powers over the substance of the body. This he did in 'The Camberwell Miracle' and 'Peckover'; and in this absorbing novel, he returns to the theme, with the study of a man fitting himself to become a great healer."
Reviewing Beresford's novel 1921 Revolution, Virginia Woolf criticised the novel's characterisations, but praised its "intellectual efficiency".[9]
In 1924, the French writer Abel Chevalley lauded Beresford as a writer " most equally endowed with that intelligence and that imagination of life which make good writers of fiction."[16]
Dorothy L. Sayers quotes from Beresford's book Writing Aloud in her book on theology, Mind of the Maker ;Sayers calls Writing Aloud "an extraordinarily fascinating book."[17] She also mentions him in passing in Whose Body?.[18]
John Betjeman, reviewing The Riddle of the Tower for the Daily Herald, called the book "a great feat of the imagination."[9]
George Orwell in 1945 described him as a "natural novelist", whose strength, particularly in A Candidate For Truth, was his ability to take seriously the problems of ordinary people.[19]
In 1971 Graham Greene wrote that "The Hampdenshire Wonder remains one of the finest and most neglected novels of this period between the great wars."[9]
Works
The Early History of Jacob Stahl (1911), the first of a trilogy of novels with A Candidate For Truth and The Invisible Event
The Riddle of the Tower (1944) (with Esmé Wynne-Tyson) (reprinted by Solar Press in 2023)
The Gift (1947) (with Esmé Wynne-Tyson)
The Prisoner
Love's Pilgrim
The Tapestry
References
^Michael R. Page,
The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells:Science, Evolution, and Ecology Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012 (p. 191)
ISBN1409438694.
^Brian Stableford, The Riddle of the Tower in Frank N. Magill, ed. Survey of Science Fiction Literature, Vol. 4. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1979. pp. 1780–1783. ISBN0-89356-194-0
^ abStanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, (Third Edition). New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1950, (p.p. 130-1)
^George M. Johnson, J. D. Beresford. Twayne Publishers, 1998 ISBN0805770399. (p.2)
^ abcdef"Beresford, J. D.", by Johnson, George M. In Johnson (ed.) Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 197: Late-Victorian and Edwardian British novelists. Detroit : Gale Research, 1999. ISBN9780787618520 (pgs. 15-30).
^Mathew Thompson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain. Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN0199287805 (p. 78-80).
^Bashir Abu-Manneh, Fiction of the New Statesman: 1913 – 1939, Lexington Books, 2011 ISBN1611493528. (p. 37)
Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 49.
Further reading
Frank Swinnerton, "Oliver Onions and J.D. Beresford", in The Georgian literary scene, 1910–1935. London, : London, Heinemann (1935).
George M. Johnson, "J.D. Beresford". Dictionary of Literary Biography. British Short-Fiction Writers 1915–1945. Ed. John H. Rogers. Detroit: Gale Research (1996).
Richard Bleiler, "John Davys Beresford" in Darren Harris-Fain, ed. British Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Before World War I. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, (1997).
George M. Johnson, J.D. Beresford New York : Twayne Publishers. (1998)
George M. Johnson, "J.D. Beresford". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Late-Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists, Second Series. Ed. George M. Johnson. Detroit: Gale Research, (1999).
George M. Johnson, Dynamic Psychology in Modernist British Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, U.K., 2006.
George M. Johnson, "The Other Side of Edwardian Fiction: Two Forgotten Fantasy Novels of 1911". Wormwood: Literature of the fantastic, supernatural and decadent. U.K., No. 16 (Spring 2011) 3–15.
George M. Johnson, "Evil is in the Eye of the Beholder: Threatening Children in Two Edwardian Speculative Satires". Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 41, No.1 (March 2014): 26–44.
