John Lehmann was one of the most eminent and perspicacious literary editors of the mid-twentieth century. His wartime periodical
Penguin New Writingwas 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 2nd 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. Both his time at Eton and, later, Cambridge (he read English at Trinity), he regarded as
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Citation: Rau, Petra. "John Lehmann". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2681, accessed 19 April 2024.]
