Cyril Connolly, The Condemned Playground: Essays 1927-1944

Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Ed. by Chris Baldick, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication Oct 1945

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)
- Essay Collection

Resources

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The Condemned Playground

(1945) is a volume of reprinted essays, reviews and other prose pieces by the English critic and literary journalist Cyril Connolly. It gathers a selection of his articles published between 1927, when at the age of twenty-three he had started working as a reviewer for the

New Statesman

and other magazines, and 1944, by which time he had entered his forties and was editing the leading monthly review

Horizon

. Most of these pieces are book reviews, but interspersed among them are some travel sketches, parodies, fragments of diary and memoir, and brief exercises in dystopian satire. The volume concludes with excerpts from Connolly’s editorial “Comment” pages from the early years of

Horizon

. This was his fourth book, but most of its contents had originally…

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2026 words

Citation: Baldick, Chris. "The Condemned Playground: Essays 1927-1944". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 August 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13637, accessed 25 April 2025.]

Cyril Connolly, The Condemned Playground: Essays 1927-1944

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