{{Short description|British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer}} {{Use British English|date=August 2011}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}} {{Lead too short|date=March 2026}} '''John Rayner Heppenstall''' (27 July 1911 in Lockwood, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England – 23 May 1981 in Deal, Kent, England) was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.<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. 632-34).</ref>
==Early life== Heppenstall was a student at the University of Leeds, where he read English and Modern Languages, graduating in 1932.<ref>Buckell, p. 15.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/184 |title=Rayner Heppenstall |website=www.dalkeyarchive.com |access-date=15 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081011224200/http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/184 |archive-date=11 October 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref> He had a brief teaching career, in Dagenham.<ref name=Name>{{cite web |url=http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mellor2/rayner2.html |title=Rayner Heppenstall (1911-1981) |website=homepage.ntlworld.com |access-date=15 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110322050537/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mellor2/rayner2.html |archive-date=22 March 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
Coming to London in 1934, he rapidly made initial contacts in the literary world. A short study, ''Middleton Murry: A Study in Excellent Normality'' (1934) brought him for a time into John Middleton Murry's ''Adelphi'' commune at "The Oaks", where in 1935 he worked as a cook.<ref>J. P. Carswell (1978), ''Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage, Katherine Mansfield, Beatrice Hastings, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky, 1906–1957'', pp. 247–249.</ref> Also in 1935 he met Dylan Thomas, sent to meet him by Sir Richard Rees of the ''Adelphi'' magazine.<ref>Andrew Lycett, ''Dylan Thomas: A New Life'' (2003), p. 130.</ref> In short order he became a Catholic convert, and married Margaret Edwards in 1937 (with whom he later had two children: Adam Heppenstall and Lindy Heppenstall, later Foord).<ref>Lycett, pp. 146, 175.</ref> In the mid-1930s he was influenced by Eric Gill.<ref name = Name/><ref>Fiona MacCarthy, ''Eric Gill'' (1989), pp. 162, 269.</ref>
He was a friend of George Orwell, whom he first encountered in 1935 through Thomas and Rees,<ref>Gordon Bowker, ''George Orwell'' (2003), p. 164.</ref> and later wrote about him in his memoir ''Four Absentees''. Heppenstall, Orwell and the Irish poet Michael Sayers shared a flat in Lawford Road, Camden. Heppenstall once came home drunk and noisy, and when Orwell emerged from his bedroom and asked him to pipe down, Heppenstall took a swing at him. Orwell then beat him up with a shooting-stick, and the following morning told him to move out. Friendship was restored, but after Orwell's death, Heppenstall wrote an account of the incident called ''The Shooting-Stick''.<ref>Bernard Crick: ''George Orwell: A Life'', 1982</ref>
During World War II he was in the British Army, but with a Pay Corps posting at Reading, close enough to remain in touch with literary Fitzrovia.<ref>Robert Hewison, ''Under Siege: Literary Life in London 1939–45'' (1977), p. 62.</ref> He was also posted to Northern Ireland.<ref>Clair Wills, ''That Neutral Island'' (2007), pp. 158–9.</ref>
In an interview for the book ''World Authors'', Heppenstall stated he had once been a left-winger, but since the 1960s had become politically more conservative.<ref name="wa" /> Heppenstall also said he was especially opposed to "Progressivism" and World Government.<ref name="wa" /> He listed Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov as the writers he most admired.<ref name="wa" />
==Novelist== Heppenstall's first novel, ''The Blaze of Noon'' (1939), was critically acclaimed.<ref name="wa" /><ref name="fk">Francis King, "The loneliness of a long-distance hater" (Reviews of ''The Master Eccentric'' and ''The Pier'' by Rayner Heppenstall). ''The Spectator'', 6 December 1986, (pp. 44–5).</ref> Much later, in 1967, it received an Arts Council award.<ref>Buckell, p. 38.</ref> He was Francophile in literary terms, and his non-fiction writing reflects his tastes.<ref name="wa" />
Critical attention has linked him to the French ''nouveau roman'', in fact as an anticipator, or as a writer of the "anti-novel". Several critics (including, according to his diaries, Hélène Cixous) have named Heppenstall in this connection. He is sometimes therefore grouped with Alain Robbe-Grillet, or associated with other British experimentalists: Anthony Burgess, Alan Burns, Angela Carter, B. S. Johnson, Ann Quin, Stefan Themerson and Eva Figes. ''The Connecting Door'' (1962) is singled out as being influenced by the ''nouveau roman''.<ref name="wa" /><ref>Randall Stevenson, ''The Last of England?'', Oxford English Literary History, vol. 12, p. 408.</ref>
He was certainly influenced by Raymond Roussel, whose ''Impressions of Africa'' he translated. Later novels include ''The Shearers'', ''Two Moons'' and ''The Pier''. He also wrote a short study of the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1953).
Heppenstall's book ''The Fourfold Tradition'' was praised by V. S. Pritchett, who expressed admiration for "its pleasure in literature".<ref name="wa" />
==Radio work== From 1945 to 1965, he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation on radio as a feature writer and producer, and then for two further years as a drama producer. His contemporaries in the department included the fellow poets Louis MacNeice, W R Rodgers and Terence Tiller.<ref>E.S. Guralnick. '[https://www.jstor.org/stable/26437970 Radio Drama: The Stage of the Mind]', in ''Virginia Quarterly Review'' Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter 1985, p 84-5</ref><ref>G D Bridson. '[https://www.jstor.org/stable/20609128 Broadcast Poetry in Britain]', in ''Poetry'', Vol 79 No 5, February 1952</ref> One of his early adaptations was of Orwell's ''Animal Farm'' in 1947.<ref>''George Orwell: A Kind of Compulsion 1903–1936'' (1998), p. 378.</ref>
In his journals, Heppenstall mentions problems he had with Evelyn Waugh regarding a radio broadcast in the 1940s. Waugh apparently felt that Heppenstall purposely insulted him when he was sent to take him to the broadcast.
==Later life== Later in life Heppenstall moved to the town of Deal. During this time he took a strong dislike to his working-class neighbours and began deliberately lighting bonfires in order to antagonise them.<ref>"Having moved to Deal, Heppenstall was soon on equally dire terms with his neighbours there, deliberately lighting bonfires in order to annoy them." King 6 December 1986.</ref><ref name="jc">John Carey, ''The intellectuals and the masses : pride and prejudice among the literary intelligentsia, 1880–1939''. London : Faber and Faber, 1992. {{ISBN|0571162738}} (pp. 209–210)</ref> Heppenstall's final novel, ''The Pier'', depicts a writer resembling himself murdering a similar family living next door to him.<ref name="fk" /><ref name="jc" />
After his death, Heppenstall's journals were published: they caused some controversy by revealing his hostility to fellow writers such as Alan Sillitoe, and also expressing prejudices against black people, Irish people, Arabs and lesbians.<ref name="fk" /><ref name="jc" />
==Works== '''Criticism''' *''Middleton Murry: A Study in Excellent Normality'' (Jonathan Cape, 1934) *''Apology for Dancing'' (Faber & Faber, 1936) *''The Double Image: Mutations of Christian Mythology in the Work of Four French Catholic Writers of To-Day and Yesterday'' (Secker & Warburg 1947) *''Léon Bloy'' (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 1954) *''Architecture of Truth: The Cistercian Abbey of Le Thoronnet in Provence'' (Thames, 1957) *''The Fourfold Tradition: Notes on the French and English Literatures, with Some Ethnological and Historical Asides'' (Barrie & Rockliff, 1962) *''Raymond Roussel: A Critical Study'' (Calder & Boyars, 1966) '''Crime History''' *''A Little Pattern of French Crime'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1969) *''French Crime in the Romantic Age'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1970) *''Bluebeard and After: Three Decades of Murder in France'' (Peter Owen,1972) *''The Sex War and Others: Survey of Recent Murder, Principally in France'' (Peter Owen, 1973) *''Reflections on the Newgate Calendar'' (W.H. Allen, 1975) *''Tales from the Newgate Calendar'' (Constable, 1981) '''Novels''' *''The Blaze of Noon'' (Secker & Warburg, 1939) *''Saturnine'' (Secker & Warburg, 1943), revised as ''The Greater Infortune'' (Peter Owen, 1960) *''The Lesser Infortune'' (Jonathan Cape, 1953) *''The Woodshed'' (Barrie & Rockliff, 1962) *''The Connecting Door'' (Barrie & Rockliff, 1962) *''The Shearers'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1969) *''London Consequences'' (The Greater London Arts Association, 1972) with Margaret Drabble, B. S. Johnson, Eva Figes, Gillian Freeman, Jane Gaskell, Wilson Harris, Olivia Manning, Adrian Mitchell, Paul Ableman, John Bowen, Melvyn Bragg, Vincent Brome, Peter Buckman, Alan Burns, Barry Cole, Julian Mitchell, Andrea Newman, Piers Paul Read and Stefan Themerson. *''Two Moons'' (Allison & Busby, 1977) *''The Pier'' (Allison & Busby, 1986) '''Poetry''' *''Patina'' (Literary Guild, 1932) *''First Poems'' (Heinemann, 1935) *''Sebastian: New Poetry'' (Dent, 1937) *''Proems'' (The Fortune Press, 1938) with Lawrence Durrell, Ruthven Todd, Patrick Evans, Edgar Foxall, and Oswell Blakeston *''Blind Men's Flowers Are Green'' (Secker & Warburg, 1940) *''Poems, 1933–1945'' (Secker & Warburg, 1946) '''Memoirs''' *''My Bit of Dylan Thomas'' (1957) *''Four Absentees: Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, Eric Gill, J. Middleton Murry'' (Barrie & Rockliff, 1960) *''The Intellectual Part: An Autobiography'' (Barrie & Rockliff, 1963) *''Portrait of the Artist as a Professional Man'' (Peter Owen, 1969) '''Miscellaneous''' *''Imaginary Conversations: Eight Radio Scripts'' (as editor) (Secker & Warburg, 1948) *''Three Tales of Hamlet'' (Gollancz, 1950) with Michael Innes *''The Master Eccentric: The Journals of Rayner Heppenstall, 1969–1981'', ed. Jonathan Goodman (Allison & Busby, 1986) '''Translations from the French'''
* ''Atala'' and ''Rene'' (François-René de Chateaubriand, Oxford University Press, 1963). * ''Impressions of Africa'' (with Lindy Foord) (Raymond Roussel, Calder & Boyars, 1969). * ''A Harlot High and Low'' (Honoré de Balzac, Penguin, 1970). * ''When Justice Falters'' (René Floriot, Harrap, 1972).
==Critical studies== *Buckell, G. J. (2007). ''Heppenstall – A Critical Study'' (DAP). {{ISBN|1-56478-471-1}} : {{ISBN|978-1-56478-471-1}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== {{wikiquote}} *[http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/184 Dalkey Archive Press on Heppenstall's life and works] *[https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-connecting-door/ ''3:AM Magazine'' on Heppenstall] *{{IMDb name|1665974}} *Archival Material at {{wikidata|qualifier|property|P485|Q24568958|P856|format=\[%q %p\]}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heppenstall, Rayner}} Category:British radio producers Category:1911 births Category:1981 deaths Category:20th-century British novelists Category:20th-century British poets Category:British male poets Category:British male novelists Category:20th-century British male writers Category:Alumni of the University of Leeds