William Plomer

William Charles Franklyn Plomer (he pronounced the surname as ploomer) (1903 - 1973) was a South African author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom.

He became famous in South Africa with his first novel Turbott Wolfe which had inter-racial love and marriage as a theme. He was co-editor of the satirical magazine Voorslagl ("Whiplash") with two other South African rebels Roy Campbell and Laurens van der Post; it promoted a racially equal South Africa.

He spent a period in Japan, where he was friendly with Sherard Vines. There, according to biographers, he was in a homosexual relationship with a Japanese man. He was never openly homosexual, during his whole lifetime, at most alluding to the subject.

He then moved to England and, through his friendship with his publisher Virginia Woolf, entered the London literary circles there. He became an important literary editor, for Faber and Faber. He was active as a librettist, with Gloriana, Curlew River and The Prodigal Son for Benjamin Britten.

Bibliography

• 1925. Turbott Wolfe
• 1927. Notes for poems.
• 1927. I Speak of Africa.
• 1928. The Family tree.
• 1929. Paper Houses
• 1931. Sado.
• 1932. The Case is altered.
• 1932. The Fivefold screen.
• 1933. The Child of Queen Victoria.
• 1933. Cecil Rhodes.
• 1934. The Invaders.
• 1936. Visiting the caves.
• 1936. Ali the Lion
• 1938. Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert (1870-1879)
• 1940. Selected poems.
• 1942. In a Bombed House.
• 1943. Double lives.
• 1945. The Dorking Thigh, and other satires.
• 1949. Four Countries.
• 1952. Museum pieces.
• 1955. A Shot in the park.
• 1955. Borderline Ballards
• 1957. Paper Homes
• 1958. At Home
• 1960. A Choice of Ballads
• 1966. Taste and Remember.
• 1975. The Autobiography of William Plomer.
• 1978. Electric Delights (ed. by Rupert Hart-Davis)

Reference

• Peter F. Alexander. William Plomer: A Biography (Oxford Lives, 1991)

External link

• Picture of Plomer from the National Portrait Gallery.