SYMONS, A(lphonse) J(ames) A(lbert) 1900-1941

PERSONAL: Born August 16, 1900, in London, England; died of a brain disorder August 26, 1941; son of Maurice Albert and Minnie Louise (Bull) Symons; married Victoria Emily Gladys Weeks, 1924 (divorced, 1936). Education: Left school at age fourteen.

CAREER: Biographer and lecturer. First Edition Club, London, England, secretary, c. 1920s; Bibliophile's Almanack, editor, from 1930.

MEMBER: Wine and Food Society (cofounder, 1933; first secretary).

WRITINGS:

A Bibliography of the First Editions of Books by William Butler Yeats, First Edition Club (London, England), 1924.

Frederick Baron Corvo, privately printed (London, England), 1927.

Emin, the Governor of Equitoria, Fleuron (London, England), 1928.

An Episode in the Life of the Queen of Sheba, privately printed (London, England), 1929.

H. M. Stanley, Duckworth (London, England), 1933.

The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography, Cassell (London, England), 1934.

Inaugural Address of His Oddshippe Bro. A. J. A. Symons (Speculator): Delivered to the Sette of Odd Volumes at Its 525th Meeting Held at the Savoy Hotel on October 18, 1938, privately printed (London, England), 1938.

The Unration Book, Wine & Food Society (London, England), 1939.

Essays and Biographies, edited by Julian Symons, Cassell (London, England), 1969.

A. J. A. Symons to Wyndham Lewis: Twenty-four Letters, with comments by Julian Symons, Tragara (London, England), 1982.

other

(Author of introduction) Ambrose Bierce, Ten Tales, First Edition Club (London, England), 1925.

(Editor) An Anthology of "Nineties" Verse, Elkin Mathews & Marrot (London, England), 1928.

(Contributor) Tradition and Experiment in Present-Day Literature, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1929.

(Contributor) The Epicure's Anthology, compiled by Nancy Quennell, Golden Cockerel (London, England), 1934.

(Contributor with Desmond Flower, and Francis Meynell) The Nonesuch Century: An Appraisal, a Personal Note, and a Bibliography of the First Hundred Books Issued by the Press, 1923-34, Nonesuch (London, England), 1936.

(Contributor) English Wits, edited by Leonard Russell, Hutchinson (London, England), 1939.

Contributor to periodical publications including Life and Letters, Book-Collector's Quarterly, Fleuron: A Journal of Typography, and Horizon A Review of Literature and Art.

SIDELIGHTS: A. J. A. Symons is best known for his story of Frederick Rolfe, published as The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography, which introduced a new technique for writing biographies. Symons also published essays concerning the book industry and several short biographies, including those of writers Theodore Hook and Edgar Allan Poe.

Symons was born to an English woman and a Russian Jew who had adopted the name Maurice Albert Symons when he immigrated to England. A. J. A. (who would later claim his initials stood for Albert James Alroy) grew up in a London suburb. He left school at age fourteen, when his family could no longer afford his education, to apprentice for a furrier. Symons still hoped for a "respectable" position, preferably as a writer. In 1924, he married Victoria Emily Gladys Weeks. During the 1920s, Symons worked primarily as secretary of the London-based First Edition Club. Having begun with scant knowledge of the book trade, Symons within a few years published his own compilation of a bibliography of William Butler Yeats, one of the First Edition Club's initial publications of limitedrun editions.

In 1928, Symons' first major biographical work, Emin, the Governor of Equitoria, was published in a limited edition. The work was based on doctor Eduard Schnitzer (1840-1892), who, as Emin Bey or Emin Pasha, taught African tribes government by conciliation. As Edmund Miller wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Symons had arrived as an author." In 1929 Symons delivered his "Tradition in Biography" talk at the City Literary Institute in London. He argued in his thesis that biographers were responsible for revealing facts, not simply listing them. "He identified the goal of the biography as establishing sympathetic understanding of the subject and additionally noted the need for biographers to aspire to the same high standards of prose style as essayists and novelists," Miller said. "He criticized the traditional chronological biography as essentially undramatic because chronology forestalls the telling juxtaposition of pertinent facts and incidents." Also that year, Symons published the pamphlet An Episode in the Life of the Queen of Sheba.

Symons became editor, in 1930, of Bibliophile's Almanack, which resurfaced as the Book-Collector's Quarterly. His first issue featured his article, "The Book-Collector's Apology," in which he explained the book collectors' mindset, and why they like first editions. Later that year financial problems forced him to auction off the materials from his collection of "Nineties" Verse.

In H. M. Stanley Symons used his new approach. His story of African explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley was Symons' first full-length biography. It opens with the Livingstone relief expedition—the explorer's first taste of fame—and then skips to Stanley's childhood and chronicles the events that led him from a runaway workhouse employee to his career as an explorer. "This biography of Stanley is not very lively or vivid, but it is eminently sane, accurate and judicious and quite readable," a London Times Literary Supplement reviewer wrote.

Symons' next subject was the 1890s writer Frederick Rolfe, also called Baron Corvo. Corvo was decadent stylistically, as evident in such writings as Stories Toto Told Me, Hadrian the Seventh, and The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole. In The Quest for Corvo Symons reveals new discoveries and provides insights into Rolfe's life; he invites readers to join him as he unravels his mysterious subject. In Books, John Langdon-Davies sharply criticized Symons' approach: "In my opinion the method of this biography, with its emphasis on the sometimes not very interesting ways in which Mr. Symons got his knowledge, rather than the knowledge itself, is unjustifiable." Two weeks later, in the same publication, Burton Rascoe lauded Symons: "An experiment in biographical writing and a distinctively successful one, combining the excitement of a good mystery story with the most intimate revelations of a strange, perverse genius or near-genius."

Symons never finished his next endeavor, a biography of Oscar Wilde. After Corvo, in fact, Symons only wrote essays. In "An Essay of the Epicure and the Epicurean," which appeared in The Epicure's Anthology, he differentiates between an epicure, a person who simply enjoys life's pleasures, and an Epicurean, to whom pleasure is optimal. He also wrote an introduction to a Nonesuch Press publication that celebrated its first one hundred books.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 149: Late Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century British Literary Biographers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995, pp. 249-254.

Symons, Julian, A. J. A. Symons: His Life and Speculations, Eyre & Spottiswoode (London, England), 1950.

periodicals

Books, September 9, 1934, John Langdon-Davies, review of The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography, p. 5; September 23, 1934, Burton Rascoe, review of The Quest for Corvo, p. 22.

Times Literary Supplement, June 15, 1933, review of H. M. Stanley, p. 413.

other

International Wine & Food Society Web site,http://www.iwfs.com/ (April 2, 2003), "History Of the International Wine and Food Society: The Beginnings, 1933-1947," 2000.

University of Delaware Web site,http://www.lib.udel.edu/ (October 21, 1999).*