Martin Roger Seymour-Smith (24 April 1928 – 1 July 1998) was a British poet, literary critic, and biographer.

Biography

Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Highgate School and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was editor of Isis and Oxford Poetry. His father Frank was a chief librarian who supplied books to Robert Graves, and who published the survey An English Library, an Annotated List of 1300 Classics in 1943, followed by What Shall I Read Next: a Personal Selection of Twentieth Century English Books in 1953. His mother Marjorie wrote poetry and published under the name of Elena Fearn.

He began as one of the most promising Anglophone post-war poets, but became better known as a critic, writing biographies of Robert Graves (whom he met first at age 14 and maintained close ties with), Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy, and producing numerous critical studies. The poet and critic Robert Nye stated that Seymour-Smith was "one of the finest British poets after 1945." and Tom Stoppard, whom he thought over-rated.

In 1981 The New Astrologer was published, Seymour-Smith's only book on this subject.

Anthony Burgess likened Seymour-Smith to Samuel Johnson due to his many literary surveys from The Guide to Modern World Literature in 1975 onwards.

When the 2013 new edition of the Oxford Companion of Modern Poetry was published, he was notably not included.

Private life

He married Janet de Granville in 1952 while spending a working holiday in Mallorca where he was a tutor to Graves' son and Graves employed de Granville as a translator. Graves was a witness at the wedding.

Selected publications

  • The Guide to Modern World Literature, Hodder & Stoughton, London (1975)
  • Who's Who in 20th Century Literature, Mcgraw-Hill, Columbus, OH. (1977)
  • Novels and Novelists: A Guide to the World of Fiction, St. Martins Press, London (1980)
  • A Reader's Guide to Fifty European Novels, Rl Innactive Titles (1980)
  • Robert Graves: His Life and Work, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC., London (1982)
  • The New Astrologer, Macmillan Pub Co., London (1983)
  • The New Guide to Modern Literature, Peter Bedrick Books, New York (1985)
  • The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, MJF Books – Fine Communications, New York (1998)
  • Collected Poems 1943–1993, Greenwich Exchange (2006)
  • The Poems of Martin Seymour-Smith, Rún Press (2014)

References

<!-- *Robert Nye. Obituary: Martin Seymour-Smith, The Independent -->

  • Ebooks and Martin Seymour-Smith by Robert Nagle. A writer envisions Seymour-Smith's classic New World of Modern Literature as an Ebook. Contains generous quotes. Accessed at 2018 March.
  • Simon Jenner. Biography of Martin Seymour-Smith
  • Robert Nye. Obituary: Janet Seymour-Smith, The Independent, 16 September 1998 (She died two months after her husband.)