Recommended Reading

The Love of Myrrhine and Konallis and Other Prose Poems (1926)

Two sequences of prose poems: the first charting the passionate love affair of two Hellenic women, the second based on Aldington's experiences during and after his service in WW1. The two are not as unrelated as, at first glance, one might think. Beautiful, sensual, and one of the major modernist explorations of the prose poem as a legitimate form, these poems which Aldington excluded from his collected verse are well worth discovering.

Candide (1927)

For an example of Aldington's achievements in translation, one can hardly do better than his version of Voltaire's classic satire, which has been reprinted in various editions both with and without his name. Deft and hilariously deadpan – not bad for a work completed in ten days.

Death of a Hero (1929)

Aldington's most famous book. A poet-survivor of WW1, filled with anger and guilt, makes his personal testimony of the war's suffering by relating the death of his naïve friend George Winterbourne. Part social comedy that satirises the bohemian fads of the pre-war years, part outright horror and tragedy as the action reaches the trenches. Although often assumed to be directly autobiographical, the novel is more accurately quasi-autobiographical with a lot of fictional manipulation. It's also Aldington's most 'modernist' novel by reason of its unconventional form.

At All Costs (1930)

The most acclaimed of Aldington's shorter war stories. Published as a stand-alone book, in the collection Roads to Glory (also 1930), and in various anthologies of war fiction. Wrenchingly poignant, it follows the final hours of a group of officers that has been ordered to make a sacrificial 'last stand' in a trench attack.

The Colonel's Daughter (1931)

Aldington's second novel is the tragicomic tale of Georgie, a neither lovely nor clever, but very sympathetic, girl whose only hope of escaping her parents is to find a husband from among her war-blasted generation. Features Dickensian portrayals of all sorts of horrific characters from rural England.

All Men Are Enemies (1933)

Alone among Aldington's novels, All Men (his third) has the distinction of having been filmed; that the film was passed with a U certificate whereas the novel was expurgated and even banned may help to explain why the author loathed the result. It's an expression of his positive philosophies: love, art, and reverence for the natural world. In its world-view and story arc, if not in many of the details, it's perhaps the most autobiographical of his seven novels.

Life for Life's Sake (1941)

Aldington's autobiography, written in the early years of the Second World War. Highly entertaining, it's both humorous and poignant, as he looks back on his literary acquaintances and on the beauties of a vanished Europe.

The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington (1948)

Although the title is a misnomer (the book omits all Aldington's prose poems and translations), this collection is an essential keeper for readers of Aldington. It reproduces the bulk of his poetry volumes from Images (1915) to The Crystal World (1937), together with a handful of previously uncollected poems.

Richard Aldington: Selected Critical Writings (1970)

Representative selection of literary essays, including reviews and introductions to volumes, from the 1920s to Aldington's death. His criticism, written for readers rather than for academics, is accessible, witty, and always informed by wide-ranging knowledge.

Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Early Years in Letters (1992)

Fascinating edition of Aldington's wartime letters to his wife, the poet H.D. He was a superb letter-writer, and these letters, which chart the correspondents' unconventional lives and the painful break-up of their marriage, are among the most passionate and eloquent.

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