Blasting and Bombardiering

Rear cover notes: "This is the autobiography of Wyndham Lewis during his most creative years, the period before and during the Great War. It reappears after many years out of print with new material that has been made available by the author's widow. Wyndham Lewis was in every way an amazing man: a central figure in the modern movement in art and literature, he was one of the most renowned painters of the century, a founder of Vorticism, one of the most original modern writers, and a polemicist of genius, having devoted much of his life to establishing the work of others. He writes of his early struggles, his social contacts with other figures of his day and of the new movements that he did so much to establish. But the war memoirs, essays and stories that make up a large part of this book are no less interesting. Above all Wyndham Lewis was a brilliant individualist, lashing out against complacency and traditionalism, not afraid to criticise his closest friends when he disagreed with them, and he undoubtedly had many enemies. Now his novels are being read again after a period of neglect and this important volume of biographical, critical and fictional writing helps to show the man behind the Tate Gallery paintings, the polemical review 'Blast' and 'The Human Age', as a colourful, courageous and cocky individualist, to whom many of the best known creative imaginations in modern Britain owe a considerable debt."