Basil Davenport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Basil Davenport | |
|---|---|
.png) At Yale in 1924 | |
| Born | March 7, 1905 Louisville, Kentucky, US |
| Died | April 7, 1966 (aged 61) New York, New York, US |
| Education | Yale University |
| Occupations | Academic, critic, writer |
Basil Davenport (1905–1966) was an American literary critic, academic, anthologist, and writer of science fiction novels[1] and other genres. He was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society.
Basil Davenport was born in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1905, the son of Ira William Davenport and Emily Andrews Davison.[2] He had one brother, John A. Davenport.[3] They grew up in Louisville. He attended the Taft School, graduated from Yale in 1926, studied the classics for two years at the University of Oxford, and then taught at Rutgers.[4] Basil Davenport enlisted in the U.S. Army on March 5, 1943, in New York, during World War II when he was 37 years old.[5] He was never married.
He died at his home in New York City on April 7, 1966, at the age of 61.[6]
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University has an archive of his collected papers.[7]
Introductory essays
He frequently wrote introductions to works by other authors, such as The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas, and The House of the Seven Gables[8] by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote a sixty-page introduction to the Utopian novel Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright.[9]
Editor of anthologies
Science fiction
Davenport described himself as a lifelong fan of science fiction.[13] His science fiction works included Tales to Be Told in the Dark.[14] He was a member of the Hydra Club, a group of sci-fi professionals and their acquaintances who met in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.
