Press, John 1920-2007 (John Bryant Press)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 11, 1920, in Norwich, Norfolk, England; died February 13, 2007. Adviser and author. Press was a former British Council worker and a poet who was often remembered for modernizing Francis Turner Pal- grave's The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Completing a B.A. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1942, he served in the Royal Artillery during World War II. Afterwards, he returned to university to earn a master's degree in 1946. Press immediately joined the British Council and served as a literature adviser in posts ranging from Greece and India to Paris and London. During this time, he published several monographs in the Council's "Writers and Their Works" series. He retired in 1979. As a poet, Press released only a handful of collections, though they were well received. Among them are Uncertainties and Other Poems (1956), Guy Fawkes Night and Other Poems (1959), The Lengthening Shadows (1971), and Poems (2004). In 1964 he completed the fifth edition of Palgrave's monumental poetry anthology; a sixth edition was released in 1994. Many critics praised Press's effort for adding modern poems by more contemporary authors like as W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot. Among Press's other books are such literary studies as The Chequer'd Shade: Reflections on Obscurity in Poetry (1958), A Map of Modern English Verse (1969), and Poets of World War One (1983).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), March 29, 2007, p. 79.