This part of the site is dedicated to the notorious author and editor Frank Harris, whose My Life and Loves scandalised Britain, Europe and America in the 1920s. Notwithstanding his reputation as a rogue and womaniser, he was an entertaining writer and individual who was always his own man.
Scribbled by Alfred Armstrong on
Undream'd of Shores was Frank Harris' last collection of short stories, and his worst. The writing seems tired and there is a repetitiveness of theme: nearly all those that are not about a man's relationship with his wife instead expound Harris' half-baked approach to religion and moral philosophy.
Scribbled by Alfred Armstrong on
After writing The Man Shakespeare, Harris decided that his vision of the life of the Bard was worthy of dramatisation, so sat down and wrote Shakespeare and his Love. He was considerably put out when he found out that Shaw had written a play on the same theme, the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, which he regarded as stealing his thunder as he tells us in his remarkably crabby preface to this volume.
Scribbled by Alfred Armstrong on
Here, as a taster, is one of the better and more interesting Portraits, of Henri Matisse and - at second hand - Renoir. (My thanks to Edgar M. Ross for his permission to reproduce this text which is out of copyright in the U.S. but not in the U.K.)
Scribbled by Alfred Armstrong on
Frank Harris' biography of Oscar Wilde cannot be read as a simple historical document. Harris was not married to the truth; he frequently invents or embroiders, recasting conversations so that his part in them became more central, placing himself at events where he was not in fact present, and even recounting incidents that never happened at all. However, it would not be fair to discount it entirely.