Gerald Gould

Gerald Gould (9 April 1885 – 2 November 1936) was an English poet, journalist, book reviewer, essayist, and fiction editor. In 1914 he and his wife Barbara Ayrton-Gould were among the founders of the United Suffragists.

Quotes

  • The civilisation and social structure of our country, rightly or wrongly, take for granted that a few people shall have a lot of money and a lot of power, and great many people very little money and very little power. But the individuals, and particularly the labouring individuals, who create and compose our civilisation and society, are beginning to cease to take this state of things for granted.
  • They kept a bird—
       Poor bird !—in a cage ;
    Till—so I have heard—
       Without need, without rage,
    Cheerfully, coldly,
       They let it flit,
    And more than boldly
       Murdered it.

    Since the law of nature
       Is danger and pain,
    The obedient creature
       Did not complain,
    But left as token
       to everybody
    The wing broken
       And the breast bloody.
    • "i. pigeon-shooting". The Collected Poems of Gerald Gould. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1929. p. 21. 

The English Novel of To-day (1924)

  • " Instinct," as Falstaff said, " is a great matter "; but it is not the whole. Mr. Lawrence believes so much in domination and antagonism that he seems not to believe in men and women—the first act of faith that God requires of the artist.
  • I was one of the first in this country—I rather think I was quite the first—to hail in print the genius of Mr. Joyce, when, many years ago, he put forth a quiet little volume of short stories called " Dubliners." I saw in his bleak and bitter realism a reading of life.
  • Whereas so many writers who are " different " seem to be merely straining away from the conventional in their originality, Mrs. Woolf transcends it easily: she has a running lyric strain that lifts the heart.
    The fairies showered gifts on Mr. Forster; sympathy, wit, knowledge, charm; but an impudent fairy came at the end and made him whimsical. Lovely as his work is, it remains at one remove from life.

Quotes about Gerald Gould

  • Gerald Gould was important in George Orwell’s life although they may never have met. As Chief Reader for the publisher Victor Gollancz in the early 1930’s Gould was involved in editing Orwell’s early books. On 17 December 1934 Orwell wrote a letter to Victor Gollancz about possible changes to A Clergyman’s Daughter; and listed sixteen changes that Gould, and Harold Frederick Rubenstein, a solicitor, playwright, author and literary critic, had recommended. Orwell made some changes, compromised over others and stood firm on some points.
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