Connolly, Cyril [key], 1903–74, English critic and editor, b. Coventry, England. After attending the Univ. of Oxford, he began his career as a journalist. With Stephen Spender he founded Horizon (1939–49), a small literary magazine that reflected Connolly's own iconoclastic and mordant attitudes toward contemporary society. He also used his critical gifts as a long-time book reviewer for The New Statesman and London's Sunday Times. Among his works are Rock Pool (1935), a satirical novel that ranks with the best of Huxley and Waugh; Enemies of Promise (1938), an autobiography of ideas; The Unquiet Grave (1944), a potpourri of critical commentaries, quotations, and aphorisms; The Condemned Playground (1945) and Previous Convictions (1964), both collections of literary essays; and The Modern Movement: 100 Key Books From England, France, and America, 1880–1950 (1965).
See biography by C. Fisher (1995); D. Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir (1983); M. Shelden, Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon (1989).
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