The English
“West Country” author, Ernest Henham (1870-1948), whose
pseudonym was “John Trevena,” is an ideal candidate for literary
reclamation. The early critical reception of Trevena’s novels
had been enthusiastic. When Furze the Cruel appeared in
1907, The Academy found Trevena “as cruel as his own
Furze; he is relentless in the grim matter-of-fact horror of his
art. . . It is always difficult to define what constitutes
greatness in any form of art; but when greatness exists it is
easy to discover. ‘Furze the Cruel’ is undoubtedly a great
book.” The Dundee Advertiser prognosticated that “‘Furze
the Cruel’ will rank in the forefront of modern fiction.” A
reviewer in The New York Times (1908) hailed his heroines
as triumphs of characterization; and a subsequent review in the
same paper found Trevena “unquestionably one of the most notable
of living writers,” a sentiment the paper then repeated two
years later. The time is right–ambitious though it may seem–to
argue that Trevena may be profitably read alongside such another
West Country novelist as Thomas Hardy, although Trevena may be
the more-recondite writer.
Many years ago
now, Paul Jordan-Smith, the literary editor of the Los
Angeles Times, said that “a full-scale ‘analysis’” of
Trevena would reveal to us “one of the most painfully
interesting figures of this century.” Two chapters in this
critical biography explore the unusual events and turbid
lineaments of his life–of which little until now has been known.
The other chapters will take up a critical analysis of his most
outstanding novels and some short fiction with the goal of
innovative canon revision. Trevena once remarked of his readers:
“We are not to meet personally, yet we cannot pass as strangers,
for the intimate condition of speaker and listener is
established between us. It is one of the sorrows of an author’s
life, that he cannot meet those who appreciate his writings,
because they are exactly the people he was meant to know.” This
study makes the case for knowing, appreciating, and adding a new
“intellectual novelist” to the canon.
