John Davy Hayward

Background

John was born on February 2, 1905. He was the son of John Arthur (a surgeon) and Rosamond Grace Rolleston Hayward.

Education

Hayward was educated at Gresham's School and in France before going up to King's College, Cambridge in 1923 to read English and modern languages. He graduated in 1927.

Career

While still a Cambridge undergraduate, John edited and published the Collected Works of the Earl of Rochester. From 1927, Hayward lived in London, working as an editor, critic, anthologist, and bibliographer. He edited many of Jonathan Swift's works.

In 1929, he edited John Donne, Dean of St Paul's: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose for the Nonesuch Press. For the Donne volume, a reviewer for Times Literary Supplement commented, “Mr. Hayward makes it as easy as is possible for the reader... ‘to unravel’ the complicated threads of Donne’s thought.” Another Times Literary Supplement lauded The Letters of Saint-Evremond as “a model of good editing in an elegant and readable essay.”

In 1932, Hayward completed Nineteenth-Century Poetry, An Anthology, and in 1933, a biography about Charles II. Both titles were well-received. Charles II, specifically, was described in the Spectator as “a brilliant and satisfying character study ... an extraordinary achievement.”

For eleven years, from 1946 to 1957, he shared a house with his close friend the poet T. S. Eliot, gathering and archiving Eliot's papers and styling himself Keeper of the Eliot Archive. Eliot's book of verse called Poems Written in Early Youth was compiled and edited by Hayward. With Eliot's help he emended the poems from The Harvard Advocate and added the poems from Eliot's days at St. Louis' Smith Academy, plus the previously unpublished "The Death of Saint Narcissus".

Since the mid-1920s Hayward had suffered from muscular dystrophy, and he died in 1965, a few months after Eliot. He bequeathed his entire collection of the literary manuscripts of T.S. Eliot to King's College, Cambridge.

Achievements

• John Hayward is best known for his editorial leadership of the periodical The Book Collector as well as his relationship to author T. S. Eliot. For almost ten years he was the visionary for the The Book Collector, that under his administration achieved eminence and authority.

Works

More photos

• book

  • SELECTED PROSE. EDITED BY JOHN HAYWARD
  • Silver Tongues. Famous speeches from Burke to Baldwin.
  • The Penguin Book of English Verse

Views

Quotations: “If literature is to continue to be a civilising element in society, it must do more than preserve a tradition; it must develop its capacities with the needs of the times.” In the same book, he revealed that he hoped for “a scheme of values ... to arise and out of disillusionment a dynamic faith in the power of the printed word to express the finest operations of human thought and sensibility.”

Personality

Physical Characteristics: As a young boy, Hayward was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. As he grew older, he would be confined to a wheelchair. His physical condition, however, did not affect his ambition in life.

Quotes from others about the person

• Elizabeth Icenhower, writing in Dictionary of Literary Biography, stated, “Hayward was devoted to books and their readers; to literature, especially poetry; to his friends; to lively conversation and social interchange; and, perhaps above all, to extraordinary and uncompromising standards in writing and publishing.”

Connections

Father:

John Arthur Hayward

Mother:

Rosamond Grace Rolleston Hayward

Friend:

T. S. Eliot

References

• Dictionary of Literary Biography: Vol. 201 Twentieth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers
• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 181