{{Use British English|date=February 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}} {{short description|British gardener and historian}} {{Infobox person |name = Edward Hyams |image = Edward_Hyams_1959.png |birth_date = {{Birth date|1910|9|30|df=y}} |birth_place = London, England |death_date = {{Death date and age|1975|11|25|1910|9|30|df=y}} |death_place = Besançon, France |spouse = {{Nowrap|Hilda Mary Aylett (m. 1933, div. 1967) <br> {{marriage|Mary Patricia Bacon|1973}}}} |occupation = Gardener, historian |module = {{Infobox military person |embed=yes |nickname= |allegiance= {{flag|United Kingdom}} |branch= {{air force|United Kingdom}}<br>{{navy|United Kingdom}} |service_years= 1939–1946 |rank= Lieutenant |unit= |commands= |battles= Second World War |awards= |relations= }} }}
'''Edward Solomon Hyams''' (30 September 1910 – 25 November 1975)<ref>Reginald, Robert. (1979). ''Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Volume 2''. Gale Research Company. p. 946. {{ISBN|0-8103-1051-1}}</ref> was a British gardener and horticulturalist, historian, novelist and writer, and anarchist.<ref name="Smith 2011">{{cite journal|author=Smith, Mick|year=2011|title=Edward Hyams: Ecology and Politics 'Under the Vine' |journal=Environmental Values|volume=20|issue=1|pages=95–119|doi=10.3197/096327111X12922350166111 |bibcode=2011EnvV...20...95S |s2cid=147182518 }}</ref> He is known for his writings as a French scholar and socialist historian, and as a gardener.<ref name="bg">Miles Hadfield, Robert Harling and Leonie Highton ''British gardeners: a biographical dictionary'' Zwemmer, 1980 (p. 159). {{ISBN|0302005412}}</ref>
== Biography ==
=== Early life ===
Edward Hyams was born in Stamford Hill, London, on 30 September 1910, to Arthur (Isaac) Hyams and Annie Dollie Leitson Hyams.<ref name="ODNB">Jane Brown, "Edward Solomon Hyams", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (21 May 2009).</ref> Arthur Hyams (b. 19 June 1881) was a "well-known London advertising agent",<ref>''The Bankers Magazine'', v.88 (1914).</ref> "of the Borough Billposting Company, London"<ref>''The New York Times'', 22 Aug. 1936.</ref> Annie was born April 1884.
Hyams attend the University College School in London as a child, then went to the Lycée Jaccard boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland and Lausanne University.<ref name="ODNB" />
Hyams spent his early adulthood (1929-1933) as a factory worker,<ref name="wa">John Wakeman, ''World Authors 1950-1970 : a companion volume to Twentieth Century Authors''. New York : H.W. Wilson Company, 1975. {{ISBN|0824204190}}. (pp. 697-99).</ref> among other jobs, including in newspapers.<ref name="ODNB" /> In 1933, Hyams and Hilda Mary Aylett, then 28, married.<ref name="ODNB" /> The two had met at work, served in World War II, and both identified as "Cockney".<ref name="wa" /><ref name="ODNB" />
=== Literary career and military service === Hyams published his first novel, ''The Wings of the Morning'' in 1939.<ref name="wa" /> Over the next two years he published two more novels, ''A Time to Cast Away'' in 1940 and ''To Sea in a Bowl'' in 1941. He continued to write novels and short fiction for the rest of his life.
In the 1930s, Hyams was a pacifist and a member of the Peace Pledge Union, but abandoned pacifism upon the outbreak of the Second World War.<ref>Martin Ceadel, '' Pacifism in Britain, 1914-1945 : the defining of a faith'' Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1980. {{ISBN|0198218826}} (p.2).</ref> Hyams joined the Royal Air Force (1939-1941) but was disqualified from being a pilot because of his poor eyesight.<ref name="wa" /> Hyams then applied for a transfer to the Royal Navy, which was granted; he spent the rest of the war in the Navy, 1941-1946, promoted to lieutenant.<ref name="wa" /><ref name="gale">''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors'' (6 Nov. 2002).</ref> Hyams and Hilda were demobilized in 1947, and settled in Molash, in Kent, England.
=== Gardening and viticulture === In Molash, the couple took up gardening, restoring a three-acre cottage garen property. He wrote about this time in his memoir, ''From the Waste Land'', describing the transformation of his home, "Nut Tree Cottages", into a prosperous market garden. Hyams stayed in Molash until 1960, while becoming an increasingly avid horticulturalist.
During this time, Hyams also developed a serious interest in viticulture, and in 1960 moved to south Devon, to re-establish grape vineyards in England.<ref name="ODNB" /><ref>{{cite book|author=Alexis Lychine|title=Alexis Lychine's Encyclopaedia of Wines and Spirits|publisher=Cassell|date=1967|page=153}}</ref> He published ''The Grape Vine in England'' in 1949, and edited a volume on English viticulture in 1953, ''Vineyards in England''. In 1965 Hyams published ''Dionysus: A Social History of the Wine Vine'', combining his passions for social history and viticulture, and arguing for hybrid viticulture.
Hyams' most famous work was ''Soil and Civilisation'' (1952), a history of farming which advocated organic farming and came out against mechanised agriculture.<ref name="hh">Horace Herring. ''From energy dreams to nuclear nightmares : lessons from the anti-nuclear power movement in the 1970s''. Charlbury : Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2005 (p.61). {{ISBN|1897766998}}</ref> ''Soil and Civilisation'' has been described as an early example of "environmental literature".<ref>Joseph M. Petulla, ''American environmentalism: values, tactics, priorities'' Texas A&M University Press, 1980 (p. x). {{ISBN|0890960879}}</ref> It also included a favourable depiction of the Incas.
From 1959 to 1974 he penned the gardening column for the ''Illustrated London News''.
He was consulted by the government of Iran when the National Botanic Garden in Tehran was being built.
One of Hyams' last works, published posthumously in 1979, was ''The Story of England's Flora''.
=== Fiction, literary, and translation work ===
Hyams' fiction included science fiction, ghost stories, often satirical, and often with a clear political bent.
His novels included ''The Astrologer'' (1950) a satirical science fiction novel about an ecological disaster,<ref name="hh" /> and ''Gentian Violet'' (1953), a satire in which the hero managed to get elected to Parliament as both Conservative and Labour without being discovered.
Hyams began submitting short fiction to the BBC Third Programme and the ''New Statesman'' in the 1950s; after they were accepted, he became a regular contributor to both.<ref name="wa" />
Hyams' literary output also encompassed literary essays, and numerous translations from French of many works of fiction and scholarship. (He won the Scott-Moncreiff Prize in 1964 for his translation of ''Joan of Arc By Herself and Her Witnesses'' by the French historian Régine Pernoud.<ref name="wa" /> His translations of work by Roger Peyrefitte and Zoé Oldenbourg were also notable, as were his translations of a history of the Marquis de Lafayette and Chopin.
Hyams' work was praised by both Anthony Burgess and Ronald Bryden, the latter describing Hyams as "the most exasperatingly gifted writer in England".<ref name="wa" />
=== Politics and social/political writings ===
Hyams remained political his entire life. An anarchist,<ref name="Smith 2011"/> Hyams was concerned in particular with the politics of land and agriculture, including the effects of the enclosures of the commons); as such, he has been influential in eco-anarchist thought, and indeed, much of his scholarship anticipated later thinking about the influence of agriculture on civilization. He wrote a biography of anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
In the 1950s and 1960s he broadened his travels, ultimately leading to publication of ''The Last of the Incas'' (1963) and a 1969 survey of botanic gardens worldwide (''Great Botanical Gardens of the World'').
Hyams was also interested in the role of violence, writing several studies on assassination, revolution, and the uses of terrorism and assassination for political ends. This included his 1974 book ''Terrorists and Terrorism'', which included chapters on Sergey Nechayev and Avraham Stern.
He was involved with the ''New Statesman'' for many years, editing a history of the publication and an anthology of selected works from the journal. Hyams also edited a historical anthology of articles from the ''New Statesman'' magazine, ''New Statesmanship''.<ref>Adrian Smith, ''The New Statesman: Portrait of a Political Weekly, 1913-1931 '' London, Routledge, 1996 (p. xii). {{ISBN|0714646458}}</ref>
Hyams maintained active relations with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.<ref name="ODNB" />
=== Later personal life and death ===
In 1967, Edward and Hilda's marriage ended.<ref name="ODNB" /> Hyams moved to Brampton in Suffolk in 1970, establishing a third garden on the property of an old Victorian school (described in ''An Englishman's Garden'' (1967)) In 1973, Hyams married Mary Patricia Bacon, divorced from Edward Bacon, an editor at the ''Illustrated London News''. He died only two years later, 25 November 1975, at the age of 65, in Besançon, Doubs, France.<ref name="ODNB" /> In his life he had written more than ninety books, broadly ranging across history, ecology, gardening, politics, and fiction, but interconnected by his radical politics and passions.
== Works ==
; Fiction * ''The Wings of the Morning'' (1939)<ref>Reviewed in ''Saturday Review'' by R. A. Cordell.</ref> * ''A Time to Cast Away'' (1940) * ''To Sea in a Bowl'' (1941, 1942) * ''William Medium'' (1947) (see [https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-e227-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 New York Public Library]) * ''Blood Money'' (1948) * ''Not in Our Stars'' (1949) * ''The Astrologer: A Satirical Novel'' (1950) * ''Sylvester'' (1951) [republished as ''998'' (1952)] * ''Gentian Violet'' (1953) * ''Stories and Cream'' (1954) * ''The Slaughter-House Informer'' (1954) * ''Into the Dream'' (1957) * ''Taking It Easy'' (1958) [republished as ''Tillotson'' (1961)] * ''The Unpossessed'' (1960)<ref>Reviewed, Alan R. Goldberg, ''Books Abroad'', v.35, n.1, p.89 (Winter 1961)</ref> * ''All We Possess'' (1961) * ''A Perfect Stranger'' (1964)<ref>Reviewed by Cade Ware for ''Book Week''.</ref> * ''The Last Poor Man'' (1966) * ''The Irish Garden'' (1966) * ''Cross Purposes: Four Stories of Love'' (1967) * ''The Mischief Makers'' (1968) * ''The Death Lottery'' (1971) * ''The Final Agenda'' (1973)<ref>Reviewed in ''Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review'' v.5, p.97 (1978).</ref> * ''Prince Habib's Iceberg'' (1974) * ''Morrow's Ants'' (1975)<ref>Mick Smith, "Morrow's Ants: E. O. Wilson and Gadamer's Critique of Historicism", chapter 2 of ''Inerpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics'' (Fordham University Press 2014)</ref>
; short fiction, published in a number of venues * "Exorcising Baldassare"
; other works * ''Metropolitan Verses'' (1934) * ''You Know What Sailors Are'' (1954) * ''Armchair Theatre'' (1956) * ''The Man in the Wood'' (1973)
; Social history and anarchism * ''Soil and Civilization'' (1952) * ''A Prophecy of Famine: A Warning and the Remedy'' (1953) with H.J. Massingham * ''The Last of the Incas: The Rise and Fall of an American Empire'' with George Ordish (1963) * ''Dionysus: A Social History of the Wine Vine'' (1965) * ''Killing No Murder: A Study of Assassination as a Political Means'' (1969)<ref>Reviewed in ''New Statesman'', ''Punch'', ''Observer Review'' 20 July 1969, and ''Books and Bookmen.''</ref> * ''A Dictionary of Modern Revolution'' (1973) * ''The Millennium Postponed: Socialism from Sir Thomas More to Mao Tse-Tung'' (1974) * ''The Changing Face of England'' (1974) (also published as ''The Changing Face of Britain'') (1977) * ''Terrorists and Terrorism'' (1974)<ref>Reviewed in ''Books and Bookmen.''</ref> * ''Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Revolutionary Life, Mind and Works'' (1979)
; Essays * "Peyrefitte", ''The Kenyon Review'' v.24, n.3, pp. 484–500 (Summer 1962) * "England" (short stories), ''The Kenyon Review'', v.32, no.1, pp. 89–95 (1970)
; Horticultural works * ''The Grape Vine in England'' (1949) * ''From the Waste Land'' (1950) (memoir of his first garden) * ''Soil and Civilisation'' (1952) * ''Grapes Under Cloches'' (1952) * ''Melons Under Cloches'' (1952) * ''Strawberry Cultivation'' (1953) [revised as ''Strawberry Growing Complete: A System of Procuring Fruit Throughout the Year'' (1962)] * ''The Speaking Garden'' (1957) * ''Vin: The Wine Country of France'' (1959) * ''Odhams Fruit Growers' Encyclopaedia'' (1960) * ''The English Garden'', 'The World of Art Library' series (1964, 1966) with 200 photographs by Edwin Smith * ''Ornamental Shrubs for Temperate Zone Gardens'', Volumes 1-2 (1965) * ''Ornamental Shrubs for Temperate Zone Gardens'' (6 volumes) (1965–67) * ''Pleasure from Plants'' (1966) * ''An Englishman's Garden'' (1967) (biographical description of his own garden at the Victorian school) * ''Irish Gardens'' (1967) * ''Lilies'' with Jan de Graaff and Hyams (1967) * ''House Plants'' (1967, with George Elbert) * ''The Gardener's Bedside Book'' (1968) * ''Great Botanical Gardens of the World'' (1969) * ''Of Gardens and Gardeners'' (1969) * ''English Cottage Gardens'' (1970) * ''Capability Brown and Humphry Repton'' (1971) (double biography of two landscape artists)<ref>Reviewed in ''New Statesman.''</ref> * ''A History of Gardens and Gardening'' (1971)<ref>Reviewed in ''Times Literary Supplement''.</ref> * ''Plants in the Service of Man: 10,000 Years of Domestication'' (1971) * ''Animals in the Service of Man: 10,000 Years of Domestication'' (1972) [republished as ''Working for Man: Domestication of Animals'' (1975)] * ''Survival Gardening: How to Grow Vegetables, Herbs, Fruit, Nuts, Wine and Tobacco in Garden or Allotment'' (1975) * ''Growing Camellias'' with Neil Treseder (1975) * ''The Story of England's Flora'' (1979)
; Other contributions * Gardening correspondent for ''Illustrated London News'' and ''The Spectator'', and various horticultural journals * Columns for ''New Statesman'' and ''Financial Times'' * Contributor to ''Punch''
; Other works * ''The Traveller's Bedside Book'' (1970, with Mary Bacon)
; Editor * Editor, ''Vineyards in England'' (1953) * Editor, with A. A. Jackson,''The Orchard and Fruit Garden: A New Pomona of Hardy and Sub-Tropical Fruits'' (1961) * ''The "New Statesman": The History of the First Fifty Years, 1913-1963'' (London, Longmans, 1963) * ''New Statesmanship: An Anthology'' (1963) - anthology of writings from ''New Statesman'')
; Translations * ''Special Friendships'' by Roger Peyrefitte (1943) [1958] * ''The Exile of Capri'' by Roger Peyrefitte (1943) * ''Family Jewels'' by Petru Dumitriu (1949) * ''The Cornerstone'' by Zoé Oldenbourg (1954) * ''Clochemerle - Babylon'' by Gabriel Chevallier (1954) * ''Diplomatic Conclusions'' by Roger Peyrefitte (1955) (transl. 1954) * ''Human Folly: To Disarm or Perish?'' by Jules Moch (transl. 1955) * ''The Apostle of Liberty: A Life of LaFayette'' by Maurice de La Fuye and Emilie Babeau (transl. 1956) * ''Wicked Village'' by Gabriel Chevallier (1956) * ''Crossing'' by Jean Reverzy (1956) * ''The Awakened'' by Zoé Oldenbourg (1957) * ''Sponger'' by Jules Renard (1957) * ''Taine's Notes on England'' by Hippolyte Taine (1872; trans. 1957) * ''Keys of St. Peter'' Roger Peyrefitte (1957) * ''Enemy'' by Tibor Meray (1958) * ''Niki: The Story of a Dog'' by Tibor Déry (trans. 1958) * ''Shouting Dies Away'' by Jean Denys (1958) * ''Party Is Over'' by Roger Grenier (1959) * ''Knights of Malta'' by Roger Peyrefitte (1959) * ''Tempo di Roma'' by Alexis Curvers (1959) * ''Pueblo'' by Michel Droit (1959) * ''The Cactus Grove'' by Michel Landa (1960) * ''Admiral Togo'' by Georges Blond (trans. 1960) * ''Les Petits Enfants du siècle'' by Christiane Rochefort (1961) * ''Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses'' by Régine Pernoud (1962; Hyams translation, 1965) * ''Chopin: A Pictorial Biography'' by André Boucourechliev (1963) * ''To See the White Cliffs'' by Philippe Ceillier (1965) * ''Margaret of Anjou: Queen of England'' by Philippe Erlanger (trans. 1970) * ''China in Transition: A Moment in History'' by Henri Cartier-Bresson * ''The Mask of Comedy'' by Henri-François Rey * ''Josyane and the Welfare'' by Christiane Rochefort
== Cultivars and gardens == Hyams' grape variety cultivars included:<ref name="molash">[http://www.molash.com/archive/hyams.htm Hyams biography], Molash, Kent, England website.</ref> * Muller Thurgau (vinifera cross) * Madeleine Sylvaner (vinifera cross) * Seyval Blanc (grape hybrid) * Baco No. 1 (grape hybrid) * Tere Dore (grape hybrid)
; Gardens * "Nut Tree Cottages", Molash, Kent<ref name="molash" /> * Hill House Nursery and Garden Landscove, near Ashburton, Devon<ref name="molash" />
==References== {{Reflist}}
; Additional reading * Mick Smith, "Edward Hyams: Ecology and Politics 'Under the Vine'", ''Environmental Values'' v.20, pp. 95–119 (2011), doi: 10.3197/096327111X12922350166111 * Jane Brown, "Edward Solomon Hyams", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (21 May 2009), https://doi-org.silk.library.umass.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/75360 * "Edward (Solomon) Hyams", ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors'' (6 Nov. 2002) * "Edward Hyams", ''UK Who's Who'', Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U155966 * ''The Nation'', 15 Nov. 1975
; Obituaries * ''The Times'' (8 Dec. 1975) * ''AB Bookmen's Weekly'', 5 Jan. 1976
== External links == *[http://www.molash.com/archive/hyams.htm Hyams biography] at Molash town website *[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404892/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm IMDB] *[http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hyams_edward_s The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction] * [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?82521 Internet Speculative Fiction Database] * [https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL2802585A/Edward_Hyams OpenLibrary.org] * "Hulthemia 'Edward Hyams' 2018", at [https://www.growsonyou.com/photo/slideshow/337519-hulthemia-edward-hyams-2018 Cultivar], GrowsOnYou.com database.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyams, Edward}} Category:1910 births Category:1975 deaths Category:20th-century English historians Category:20th-century English novelists Category:English anarchists Category:English environmentalists Category:British gardeners Category:English nature writers Category:English science fiction writers Category:English socialists Category:Organic farmers Category:People from the Borough of Ashford Category:English viticulturists Category:People from Stamford Hill Category:Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activists Category:Royal Navy personnel of World War II Category:People educated at University College School