Cyril Connolly (10 September 1903 - 26 November 1974) was an English man of letters. He was born in Coventry in Warwickshire to a wealthy family of Anglo-Irish extraction. He was educated at St Cyprian's School and Eton College, at both of which he was an exact comtemporary of George Orwell, who remained a life-long friend. Connolly later attended Balliol College, Oxford.

A regular contributor to the leftist New Statesman in the 1930s, Connolly went on to co-edit, with Stephen Spender and Peter Watson, the short-lived but influential literary magazine Horizon from 1939 to 1950. He was at one time the literary editor for The Observer, and, after 1950, the chief book reviewer for the London Sunday Times. Connolly wrote only one novel, The Rock Pool (1935) a satirical work which was generally well received. Perhaps his best known work is the autobiography Enemies of Promise (1938), in which he attempted to explain why he failed to produce the literary masterpiece which he and others believed he should have been capable of writing. He died in 1974.

Since 1976, Connolly's papers and personal library of over 8,000 books have been housed at the University of Tulsa.

Works

• The Rock Pool, 1935
• Enemies of Promise, 1938
• The Unquiet Grave, 1944
• The Condemned Playground, 1945
• Previous Convictions, 1964
• The Modern Movement: 100 Key Books From England, France, and America, 1880–1950, 1965
• The Evening Colonnade 1973

Books about Cyril Connolly

• Michael Shelden (1989): Friends of Promise: Cryil Connolly and the World of Horizon, Hamish Hamilton / Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-016138-8

External Links

• Connolly 100
• Connolly Library description at the University of Tulsa