Cecil Day-Lewis Summary

The British poet, essayist, and detective story writer Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972) regarded himself as a voice of revolution, both poetic and political, taking as a necessary starting point the "certa... Read more

In 1927, Cecil Day-Lewis eliminated the hyphen from his writing name as a gesture of "inverted snobbery." But according to his son, Sean Day-Lewis, he tried to restore it at the end of his life when h... Read more

Critical Essay by Joseph N. Riddel Literary history has come to consider Day Lewis almost exclusively in terms of his association with Auden and Spender, as a member of the so-called Auden Group. And... Read more

Critical Essay by Samuel Hynes Transitional Poem is a conventional young man's statement of the transition from adolescence to manhood, with the particular poetic themes customarily associated... Read more

In the following essay, originally published in 1941, scholar and critic Scarfe looks at different stages in Day Lewis's verse to assess his progress as a poet, finding a "deep integrity... Read more

Calling Day Lewis "a poet of the first importance," Strong opines in the following essay that, while Day Lewis's "phase of intense political consciousness" produced ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Irish educator and author Maxwell explores the poetic theories presented in Day Lewis's essay collection Revolution in Writing, particularly noting Marxist influences ... Read more