Alfred Reynolds (writer)

Alfred Reynolds in August 1992
The native form of this personal name is Reinhold Alfréd. This article uses the Western name order.

Alfred Reynolds (Alfréd Reinhold) (b. 13 December 1907, Budapest, d. 1993, London)[1] was a writer on social and religious topics.

Biography

Reynolds was born into a wealthy family in Budapest, of a Jewish mother and a Roman Catholic father. He was educated at schools in Budapest and Vienna and at the University of Leipzig (1928–1931).[1] In 1931 he founded the literary magazine Haladás (Progress), in which he published the poets Miklós Radnóti, István Vass and Mihály-András Rónai. The police forced him to close the magazine, but he started a left-leaning monthly, Névtelen Jegyző (Anonymous Chronicler), which published Reynolds's only collection of poetry, Első és utolsó lírai kötete (First and Last Book of Lyrics) (1932)[2] before it too was closed down. Reynolds briefly joined the Communist Party of Hungary, leaving after Joseph Stalin's assassination of Sergey Kirov in 1934. He was imprisoned, subsequently placed under police observation and lost his job. In 1936 he escaped from Hungary and went to London where he lived for the rest of his life. He was in the British Army during the Second World War and joined the Intelligence Corps in 1944, participating in the programme of denazification.

In post-war London Reynolds led a libertarian group called the Bridge Circle.[3] Articles from its journal, the London Letter, are collected in Pilate's Question (1982), the title essay of which was the group's central focus of attention.[4] Writers who early in their careers attended Bridge Circle meetings included Nicolas Walter, Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd. Most notable was Colin Wilson, who has said he first wrote The Outsider as a riposte to Pilate's Question.

Reynolds' Jesus versus Christianity (1988) contrasts the teachings of Jesus with the doctrines of the Christian churches.[5]

Reynolds had been known of in Hungarian literary circles because of his friendship with the youthful Radnóti but he had no contact with Hungarian writers since moving to England. In 1980 a copy of his early volume of poetry was rediscovered by the literary critic François Bréda in a bookshop in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and he was traced in London. In 1993 he visited Cluj at the invitation of Bréda and the poet Géza Szőcs, where he was well received[6] and donated to Szőcs some hitherto unreleased Radnóti manuscripts.[7]

Reynolds' archive of papers, letters and photographs is to be donated to the Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest.[8]

Works

Bibliography

Online texts

References

  1. 1 2 Richard Headicar, Reinhold Alfred, Colchester: Animata Omnia, 2004
  2. ↑ Reinhold Alfréd, Első és utolsó lírai kötete, Budapest: Névtelen Jegyző, 1932
  3. ↑ Nicolas Walter, "Anarchism in Print: Yesterday and Today", Government and Opposition, 5:4, pp.523-540, 1970
  4. ↑ Alfred Reynolds, Pilate's Question: Twenty years of articles, essays and sketches (1950-1970), London: Cambridge International Publishers, 1982
  5. ↑ Alfred Reynolds, Jesus Versus Christianity, Open Gate Press, 1993
  6. ↑ François Bréda
  7. ↑ François Bréda, Alfréd Halála Után (Hungarian)
  8. ↑ Obituary of Alan Gregory Detweiler, Toronto Globe and Mail, 10 March 2012

External links

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