John Hayward

John Hayward (1905–65), editor, critic, anthologist, read modern languages at King’s College, Cambridge. Despite the early onset of muscular dystrophy, he became a prolific and eminent critic and editor, bringing out in quick succession editions of the works of Rochester, Saint-Évremond, Jonathan Swift, Robert Herrick and Samuel Johnson. Other works included Complete Poems and Selected Prose of John Donne (1929), Donne (1950), T. S. Eliot: Selected Prose (1953), The Penguin Book of English Verse (1958), and The Oxford Book of Nineteenth Century English Verse (1964). Celebrated as the learned, acerbic editor of The Book Collector, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1952; CBE in 1953. Writers including Graham Greene and Stevie Smith valued his editorial counsel; and Paul Valéry invited him to translate his comedy Mon Faust. Hayward advised TSE on essays, poems, and plays including The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk, and most helpfully of all on Four Quartets. See Helen Gardner, The Composition of ‘Four Quartets’ (1978); John Smart, Tarantula’s Web: John Hayward, T. S. Eliot and Their Circle (2013).