Letters by or about Norman Cameron, with photocopies of drafts of four of his poems

This material is held atUniversity of Leeds Special Collections

Reference
- GB 206 Brotherton Collection MS 20c Cameron
Dates of Creation
- 1940-1971
Name of Creator
- Cameron, Norman, 1905-1953
Language of Material
- English
Physical Description
- 1 folder; manuscript and typescript (mostly photocopy).

Scope and Content

Comprises: (1) Photocopies of autograph manuscript and typescript correspondence of Norman Cameron with Alan Hodge and others during the Second World War and afterwards, dated 1940-1951; (2) Autograph manuscript and typescript correspondence relating to the Norman Cameron letters, dated 1956-1971, together with an obituary on Cameron by Alan Hodge; and (3) Photocopies of four manuscript and typescript poems by Norman Cameron which were later included in the Collected Poems published in 1957, or in the later collected poems (edited by Warren Hope and Jonathan Barker) in 1990.

Administrative / Biographical History

(John) Norman Cameron, the poet and translator, was born in 1905 in India and educated at Fettes and Oriel College, Oxford, where he read Classics. He published poems in The Fettesian and Oxford Poetry, as well as New Verse. During the 1930s he worked for some years in the Colonial Service in Nigeria, then as an advertising copy-writer in London. His only original collection of poetry to be published during his lifetime, The Winter House, appeared in 1935. He was also a notable translator, of Rimbaud and Villon and much French prose, including Candide, Cousin Pons, and Stendhal's letters. During the Second World War he became a propagandist, notably in Italy. His Collected Poems, with an introduction by his close friend Robert Graves, did not appear until 1957, four years after his death in 1953, and his Complete Poems did not appear until 1985.