Biography Essay

David Jones seemed to enter the company of major modern poets when, at a 1937 reception for the publication of his first work, the booklength poem based on his experience in World War I, William Butler Yeats rose from the crowd and intoned: "I salute the author of In Parenthesis." Later T. S. Eliot, in a "Note of Introduction" to the second edition (1961) of In Parenthesis, included David Jones with Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and himself in the inner circle of modernist writers. But as late as 1980 it was necessary to entitle a selection of his poetry Introducing David Jones. As the youngest member of his literary generation, and the slowest to have his work published, Jones has been late in gaining popular recognition. He lived largely apart from the public literary world, pursuing in seclusion his other crafts of painting and engraving and lettering, illustrating his...