Talk:Richard Aldington

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Is there some reason we need a huge block of text, that is nothing but the table of contents of one of the books he was simply the editor of? Its not encyclopedic and of no relevance to the biography of this gentleman. I could see it being a seperate article, if there was more narrative detail about the book its self. Stbalbach 19:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I have added a large number of similar lists (most of the contents of Category:Poetry anthologies) over the last year or more. This is the first occasion that anyone has suggested that this is not encyclopedic material. If I have to defend it, I would say two things:


 * 1) of course his taste in literature tells you something about Aldington, the writer, and does so in a different way from trying to theorise about what he may have taken, for example, from the 1890s generation;
 * 2) such lists serve an important basic purpose in developing other articles, as others decide to fill in red links, and in navigation of the site.

I certainly think that a unilateral cut is not the way to raise the issue.

Charles Matthews 20:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Look, Charles, Im sorry if you were personally offended, nothing personal ok? I didnt go looking for "edits by Charles" to delete, I make edits based on what I see and explain in the comments why and if someone has a problem with it, they can revert it and/or discuss, thats how wikipedia works.

Then I propose creating a separate article, for the book, as is the convention in Wikipedia, books have their own articles. It looks bad esthetically in the article and makes no sense. Of course now that you explain the reasoning, I can understand the thinking behind it, but its not at all clear to the reader what this is, and why. In any case what this is and why its there needs a lot more explanation, and better layout. Stbalbach 21:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we can see whether anyone else agrees with you. Normally people using a reference book are credited with some intelligence. Charles Matthews 22:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok no problem Ill give it a day or two to see what other comments arise. I consider myself pretty intelligent and it didnt make sense to me what this cryptic mass of text was intended for (apparently the reasons are hidden and had to be teased out in the dicussion page). Stbalbach 22:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This article needs a lot of expansion. If and when that happens, I'd support moving the anthology material to its own article. Filiocht | The kettle's on 09:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Archive at the Harry Ransom Center
Sashafresh (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello,

I work with the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I would like the Wikipedia community to know that the HRC has a Richard Aldington Archive. Due to conflict of interest, I cannot make changes on the page myself. Would someone please add the following in the External Links section:

"Richard Aldington: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center".

It would link to: http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00005.xml&query=Richard%20Aldington&query-join=and

Thank you.

Shell shock
"and may have continued to suffer from the then-unrecognised phenomenon of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Perhaps but shell shock was well known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock Keith-264 (talk) 12:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Richard Aldington died in Sury-en-Vaux in Cher, France rather than Lere. He had lived there since 1957. He is buried in the village cemetery. See for example, GATES,N.T. (Ed.). 1992. Richard Aldington: an autobiography in letters. The Pennsylvania University Press. SAOrr (talk) 21:03, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Aldington's deathplace
Richard Aldington died in Sury-en-Vaux in Cher, France rather than Léré. He had lived there since 1957. He is buried in the village cemetery. See for example, GATES,N.T. (Ed.). 1992. Richard Aldington: an autobiography in letters. The Pennsylvania University Press. SAOrr (talk) 21:08, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

English sentences for an English poet
"He knew Wyndham Lewis well, also, reviewing his work in The Egoist at this time, hanging a Lewis portfolio around the room and on a similar note of tension between the domestic and the small circle of London modernists regretting having lent Lewis his razor when the latter announced with hindsight a venereal infection.[7] Going out without a hat, and an interest in Fabian socialism, were perhaps unconventional enough for him.[8]"

It is probable that this paragraph was written by an English person with knowledge of the subject matter, but it's not English, and is not fixable without knowing the story. So I can't repair "hanging a Lewis portfolio around the room" because I don't know what room is intended. What room? The Egoist's editorial offices? Please say so. Anyway, the sentence should end there. "On a similar note of tension between the domestic..." Do you mean servant? Or is domestic an adjective that refers to nothing? Because contrasting "domestic" and "a small circle of modernists" makes no sense. "modernists" should again end the sentence. Maybe the last sentence relates to Lewis. Dstlascaux (talk) 16:29, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The whole article is still a mess in 2019. It's a shocking indictment of the Wiki system that an article about a major war poet should be in this appalling state since its inception. Anna (talk) 20:01, 10 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Hardly a major poet. The Faber Book of Modern Verse, 3rd edition 1965, didn't include him at all and no one quotes his poetry, ever. And his novel Death of a Hero (what a crass title, I ask you), though a bestseller which gave him an inflated sense of his own importance, wasn't much good either. Compared with Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, which is still in print, it doesn't measure up. He is remembered as a social curiosity who knew a number of more interesting people and made himself persona non grata with his 'knocking' biography of T.E. Lawrence, which is now considered a sour-grapes effort. Lawrence was indeed a poser and self-mythologiser, but also a man of genuine attainments, a fact which offended Aldington's above-mentioned inflated sense of importance -- Aldington really couldn't see why, outside the Soviet Union, he himself wasn't as big a public idol as Lawrence, even though he'd never done anything much, and it ate away at him. If you read his letters to Lawrence Durrell over the last few years of his life (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Literary-Lifelines-Richard-Aldington-Lawrence-Correspondence/dp/0571115012), it's embarrassing how much he hated Colonel Lawrence, who he never met and who never did him any harm at all except in surpassing him by many leagues as an historical personality of note. If Aldington, by that time more or less permanently drunk, as his letters convey, hadn't died when he did in July of 1962, then the premiere of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, to a rapturous reception the following December, would probably have given him a fatal apoplexy anyway. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:26, 8 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Do you have anything to offer or ask about the development of the article? That is the point of the talk pages. Anna (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Confusing caption
(Edward Godfree) Richard Aldington by Howard Coster.
 * Sorry, but what does (Edward Godfree) mean? Valetude (talk) 00:30, 15 February 2019 (UTC))

Wounded in the war?
Reading through many Aldington biographies, I cannot see any reference to his being physically wounded, other than later lung problems. So I have removed the mention from the earlier article. Anna (talk) 21:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Duplicate paragraph
Paragraph starting with "In 1930 ..." is duplicated three paragraphs down from the original. As I don't know which one makes sense in placement, I'll leave this for someone with a strong investment in the article to handle. Humbug26 (talk) 22:34, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Anna (talk) 02:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

fixed but also screwed up footnote 12
I just made this edit, because the link in the footnote previously went to the current issue of the London Review of Books; now it goes to the 2015 article. 13:17, 19 June 2021‎ Maurice Magnus talk contribs‎ 33,056 bytes +153‎  →‎Early career: fixed citation undo

The problem is that the footnote previously had an a b c d in it; that is, it was used several times (I'm not certain that it was four times). It no longer is. Can someone fix it, please?Maurice Magnus (talk) 13:23, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I undid my edit. Someone who gets to the current issue of the London Review can use the search engine, as I did, to get to the article.Maurice Magnus (talk) 00:36, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Citations tags
Tags were added that citations were needed. Citations were already placed in the article. The edit summary makes that clear. Anna (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Anna, the claims in question are "Only later were confidential government files concerning Lawrence's career released, allowing the accuracy of Lawrence's own account to be gauged" and "Aldington's own reputation never fully recovered from what came to be seen as a venomous attack upon Lawrence's reputation. Many believed that Aldington's suffering in the bloodbath of Europe during the First World War caused him to resent Lawrence's reputation, gained in the Middle Eastern theatre". The source given is Poetry Foundation. I don't see these claims supported in the source. Am I misreading the source? Thanks, Brycehughes (talk) 11:58, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I checked through the sources in question and added some biog detail around Lawrence and added new refs to clarify. Anna (talk) 22:21, 14 April 2022 (UTC)