Hugh Sykes Davies

Hugh Sykes Davies (1909–84), author and critic. Educated at St John’s College, Cambridge – where he edited (with William Empson) the magazine Experiment, and where he took the Jebb Studentship and the Le Bas Prize, 1931 – he became a University Lecturer and Fellow of St John’s. In the 1930s he was a Communist and Surrealist, and co-created the London Surrealist Exhibition, 1936. Novels include Full Fathom Five (1956) and The Papers of Andrew Melmoth (1960); other works include the posthumous Wordsworth and the Worth of Words (1986). See George Watson, ‘Remembering Prufrock: Hugh Sykes Davies 1909–1984’, Sewanee Review 109: 4 (Fall 2001), 573–80.