Henry Reed

Here’s a biography of Henry Reed (poet / writer) with citations:

Henry Reed – Life, Work, and Legacy

Henry Reed (22 February 1914 – 8 December 1986) was a British poet, translator, journalist, and radio dramatist, best known today for a short set of war poems.

Early Life and Education

Reed was born in Birmingham, England, the son of a master bricklayer.
He attended King Edward VI School, Aston and later studied at the University of Birmingham.
At university he earned a Bachelor’s (BA) and then Master’s (MA) degree. His MA thesis was on the novelist Thomas Hardy.
During his academic period, he was associated with literary figures such as W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Walter Allen.

Wartime Service & Early Career

In 1941, Reed was conscripted into the British Army. He served primarily as a Japanese translator / cryptographer, working in naval intelligence, after earlier work in Italian translation.
His aptitude for languages (French, Italian, Greek) had already been demonstrated.
Over his life, Reed also worked as a teacher, journalist, critic, and freelance writer.

Literary Achievements

Poetry

Reed published one collection in his lifetime, A Map of Verona (1946).
That collection included Lessons of the War, a set of three poems originally published in New Statesman in 1942, among which “Naming of Parts” is the most famous.
He also wrote Chard Whitlow: Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Evening Postscript, a witty parody of T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, often anthologised.
After his death, a more complete edition, Collected Poems, was published (1991) with previously unpublished works.

Radio & Drama

Reed had a long association with the BBC, producing radio plays, adaptations, and dramatized works from ~1944 to 1979.
His most famous radio series was the Hilda Tablet plays.
Another work is The Streets of Pompeii, produced for radio in 1952.
His works in translation include translations of Balzac and Ginzburg, among others.

Style, Themes & Reputation

Reed’s poetry is often noted for wit, irony, understatement, and subtle satire.
Lessons of the War parodies army training and the absurdities of wartime bureaucracy.
His parody of Eliot shows his ability to engage in literary dialogue and critique.
His personal correspondence (archived) reveals he confronted and expressed homosexual identity with complexity under a more restrictive period, and some of this informed his work.
Reed was sometimes mistaken for another poet, Herbert Read, and used playful wordplay around that confusion (e.g. using a “Herbert Reeve”).

Legacy & Archival Material

The Papers of Henry Reed (manuscripts, letters, drafts) are held at the University of Birmingham Library Special Collections.
Reed’s work remains studied particularly in contexts of war poetry, parody in literature, and mid-20th-century radio drama.
He is remembered especially for Naming of Parts, which remains part of many poetry curricula.

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