Randolph Hughes
Randolph William Hughes (10 August 1889 – 21 March 1955) was an Australian lecturer, literary critic and academic.
Contents
Biography
Randolph Hughes was born in Burwood, New South Wales, the son of William Henry Hughes, a Sydney-born warehouseman, and his wife Affra Castle (née Bell), from Melbourne.[1] Educated at Sydney Boys High School, he studied classics at the University of Sydney where he came under the influence of Christopher Brennan[2] and became a friend of A. R. Chisholm.[1] Hughes taught classics (1913–15) at Bathurst High School. Awarded a travelling scholarship, he sailed to London and from there to Cairo. During World War I, he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers and served in Egypt and Sinai (1916).[1]
In 1917 Hughes matriculated at New College, Oxford, where he went on to take first-class honours in medieval and modern languages in 1919. From 1920 to 1922 he taught English literature in France, first at the University of Rennes and then at the École Normale Supérieure.[1] In 1922 he was appointed lecturer in French language and literature at King's College London; he was awarded his doctorate for a thesis on Baudelaire. Following a dispute with a colleague, Hughes resigned his post in 1935.[1] He survived by freelancing, exam marking and doing academic odd jobs.
In 1936 Hughes visited the German Empire and wrote with admiration on the Rally of Honour and the new Germany under National Socialism.[3]
Later in life, Hughes lived in Chelsea, devoting the bulk of his creative energies to the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Despite failing health, he produced a beautiful edition of Lucretia Borgia,[4] published by the Golden Cockerel Press in 1942; an edition of Pasiphae in 1950[5] and a large volume containing a reconstruction of Swinburne's unfinished novel, Lesbia Brandon, published by the Falcon Press in 1952.[6]
He contributed to the Anglo-German Review, The English Review, The Nineteenth Century and the Mercure de France, among other periodicals.
Randolph Hughes died in Tunbridge Wells at the age of 65.
Private life
On 29 December 1914 he married a schoolteacher Ina Muriel Stanley Hall, sister of Elsie Hall, at the Congregational Church, Waverley; the couple had twin sons.
In 1942, Hughes married Dorothy Freda Ayres. The marriage was later dissolved.
Works
- C. J. Brennan: An Essay in Values (1934)
- A Further Decline of the West (1934)
- Mallarmé: A Study in Esoteric Symbolism (1934)
- France and the Present Conflict of Ideals (1935)
- Culture in Australia (1936)
- The New Germany (1936)
Selected publications
- "Baudelaire et Balzac," Mercure de France, Vol. CCLV (1934)[7]
- "The Republic Arraigned," The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. CXIX (1936)
- "Current Events in Europe, I. Notes on France," The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. CXXI (1937)
- "Algernon Charles Swinburne," The Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. CXXI (1937)
- "Vers la contrée du rêve. Balzac, Gautier et Baudelaire disciples de Quincey," Mercure de France, Vol. CCXCIII (1939)
- "Unpublished Swinburne," Life and Letters, Vol. LVI, No. 125 (1948)
Notes
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- Chisholm, A. R. (1955). "In Memoriam: Randolph William Hughes," Australian Quarterly, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, pp. 27–29.
- Chisholm, A. R. (1958). Men Were My Milestones: Australian Portraits and Sketches. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
- Hawke, John (2002). "The Politics of Symbolism: The Correspondence of Randolph Hughes and Jack Lindsay." In: Jill Anderson, ed., Australian Divagations: Mallarmé & the 20th Century. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 55–77.
- Keri, Adrian (2021). Australian Literary Fascists, 1905-1945: A Comparative Case Study into the Development of Fascist Ideology in Australia. University of Notre Dame Australia.
- Melleuish, Gregory (1996). "Randolph Hughes versus Percy Stephensen: An Australia Cultural Battle of the 1930s," Arts, No. 18, pp. 27–42.
- Melleuish, Gregory (2001). "Randolph Hughes and Alan Chisholm: Romanticism, Classicism and Fascism," Australian Studies, Vol. XVI, No. 2, pp. 1–18.
- Melleuish, Gregory (2001). "Randolph Hughes's Religion: Anti-Christianity and the Cult of Beauty," Australian Religion Studies Review, Vol. XIV, No. 2, pp. 46–58.
- Melleuish, Gregory (2008). "The Master and the Disciples: A. R. Chisholm, Randolph Hughes and Carl Kaeppel on Christopher Brennan," Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, pp. 103–14.
External links
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- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Melleuish, Gregory. "Hughes, Randolph William (1889–1955)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
- ↑ Clark, Axel (1980). Christopher Brennan: A Critical Biography. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
- ↑ Schwarz, Angela (1993). "British Visitors to National Socialist Germany: In a Familiar or in a Foreign Country?," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, pp. 487–509.
- ↑ Chisholm, A. R. (1944). "Swinburne's Lucretia Borgia," The Australian Quarterly, Vol. XVI, No. 2, pp. 85–88.
- ↑ Chisholm, A. R. (1951). "Pasiphae: A Poem by A. C. Swinburne, Randolph Hughes," The Australian Quarterly, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, pp. 11–14.
- ↑ Chisholm, A. R. (1952). "Swinburne as Novelist," The Australian Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, pp. 90–92.
- ↑ Hughes, Randolph (1935). "Réponse à trois critiques sur 'Baudelaire et Balzac'," Mercure de France, Vol. CCLVII, pp. 211–17.
