John Lehmann was one of the most eminent and perspicacious literary editors of the mid-twentieth century. His wartime periodical Penguin New Writing was one of the few successful literary forums for poetry, essays and shorter fiction while his careful post-war editorship revived interest in a number of classic European writers.

John Lehmann was born on June 2^nd 1907, in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, as the fourth child and only son of Rudolph Chambers Lehmann, Liberal MP, celebrated Cambridge oarsman, Punch contributor and editor of the Daily News, and Alice Davis, a resolute New Englander, twenty years his junior. He was educated at Summer Fields, which he left with a scholarship for Eton in 1921.

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First published 21 March 2002

Citation: Rau, Petra. "John Lehmann". The Literary Encyclopedia. 21 March 2002.
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