The son of a protestant clergyman, Cecil Day Lewis was born at Ballintubbert, Queen's County, Ireland in 1904. His mother died when he was a child, and he was brought up in London by his father and an aunt. Day Lewis studied at Wadham College, Oxford, where he became part of W.H. Auden's circle, and his first collection of poems Beechen Virgil was published while he was still a student. In the year of his graduation he helped Auden to edit Oxford Poetry 1927.
In 1928 he married Mary King, the daughter of a Sherborne schoolmaster, and became a teacher himself.
Financial hardship led him to start to write detective novels to supplement his income from poetry, and on the advice of his agent he adopted a pseudonym for these to keep his name as a poet unclouded. So, as “Nicholas Blake”, he wrote twenty novels, sixteen of which starred the character of Nigel Strangeways, an Oxford graduate. These novels are full of literary references, as well as murder and mayhem. The first of these novels, A Question of Proof, was published in 1935 and from then on Day Lewis was able to earn his living by writing, and give up teaching.
From 1935 until 1938 he was a member of the Communist party, but by the time war broke out he was disillusioned with their views.
From 1941 he worked at the Ministry of Information as an editor in the publication department, joining the firm Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor when the war ended. In 1943 he published Word Over All (1943) his first volume of poetry wholly without influence from Auden. These poems also reflected his personal life, including an affair which resulted in a son, and a relationship with novelist Rosamund Lehmann, rather than the social themes he had tended to deal with before this.
In 1951 Day Lewis married actress Jill Balcon, and the couple lived in Greenwich. Between 1951-56 he was professor of poetry at Oxford, and he lectured at several universities during the fifties and sixties. In 1968 he was appointed Poet Laureate, succeeding John Masefield. Cecil Day Lewis died on May 22, 1972, the father of five children, including actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
bibliography
- Beechen Virgil And Other Poems, 1925
- Ed.: Oxford Poetry, 1927 (With W.H. Auden)
- Country Comets, 1928
- Transitional Poems, 1929
- From Feathers To Iron, 1931
- The Magnetic Mountain, 1932
- Dick Willoughby, 1933
- A Hope For Poetry, 1934
- Revolution In Writing, 1935
- Collected Poems 1929-33, 1935
- A Question Of Proof, 1935
- A Time To Dance And Other Poems, 1935
- Noah And The Waters, 1936
- A Time To Dance, Noah And The Waters..., 1936
- Thou Shell Of Death, 1936
- Imagination And Thinking, 1936
- We're Not Going To Do Nothing: A Reply To Mr. Aldous Huxley's Pamphlet 'What Are You Going To Do About It?', 1936
- Friendly Tree, 1937
- There's A Trouble Brewing, 1937
- Ed.: A Writer In Arms, 1937
- Ed.: The Echoing Green, 1937
- Ed.: The Mind In Chains, 1937
- Ed.: Anatomy Of Oxford, 1938
- Starting Point, 1938
- Overtures To Death And Other Poems, 1938
- The Beast Must Die,
- The Smiler With The Knife, 1939
- Child Of Misfortune, 1939
- Screenplay: The Colliers, 1939
- Screenplay: The Green Girdle, 1940
- Poems In Wartime, 1940
- Translator: The Georgics Of Virgil, 1940
- Radio play: Calling James Braithwaite, 1940
- Selected Poems, 1940
- Malice In Wonderland / The Summer Camp Mystery, 1940
- The Case Of The Abominable Snowman / The Corpse In The Snowman, 1941
- Ed.: A New Anthology Of Modern Verse 1920-1940
- Word Over All, 1943
- (Poems), 1943
- Poetry For You, 1944
- Short Is The Time, 1945
- Ed.: Orion 2-3, 1945-46
- Minute For Murder, 1947
- Translator: The Graveyard By The Sea, By Paul Valèry, 1947
- The Poetic Image, 1947
- The Colloquail Element In English Poetry, 1947
- Enjoying Poetry, 1947
- Poems 1943-47, 1948
- The Otterbury Incident, 1948
- Collected Poems 1929-1936, 1949
- Head Of A Traveller, 1949
- The Poet's Task, 1951
- Selected Poems, 1951
- The Grand Manner, 1952
- Translator: The Aenid Of Virgil, 1952
- The Dreadful Hollow, 1953
- An Italian Visit, 1953
- The Lyrical Poetry Of Thomas Hardy, 1953
- Collected Poems, 1954
- Christmas Eve, 1954
- Whisper In The Gloom, 1954
- Notable Images Of Virtue, 1954
- Ed.: The Golden Treasure Of The Best Songs And Lyrical Poems In The English Language, 1954
- Ed.: The Chatto Book Of Modern Poetry 1915-1955, 1956
- Ed.: New Poems, 1957
- A Tangled Web / Death And Daisy Bland, 1956
- End Of Chapter, 1957
- The Newborn, 1957
- Pegasus And Other Poems, 1957
- The Poet's Way Of Knowledge, 1957
- A Penknife In My Heart, 1958
- The Widow's Cruise, 1959
- The Buried Day, 1960
- The Worm Of Death, 1961
- Ed.: A Book Of English Lyrics, 1961
- The Gate And Other Poems, 1962
- The Deadly Joker, 1963
- Ed.: The Collected Poems Of Wilfred Owen, 1963
- Translator: The Eclogues Of Virgil, 1963
- The Sad Variety, 1964
- Requiem For The Living, 1964
- On Not Saying Anything, 1964
- A Marriage Song For Albert And Barbara, 1965
- The Room And Other Poems, 1965
- The Lyric Impulse, 1965
- Thomas Hardy, 1965
- The Morning After Death, 1966
- The Nicholas Blake Omnibus, 1966
- C. Day Lewis: A Selection From His Poetry, 1967
- Selected Poems, 1967
- The Abbey That Refused To Die, 1967
- The Private Wound, 1968
- A Need For Poetry, 1968
- Ed.: The Midnight Skaters, 1968
- Ed.: The Poems Of Robert Browning, 1969
- The Whispering Roots, 1970
- Going My Way, 1970
- On Translatng Poetry, 1970
- Ed.: A Choice Of Keats Verse, 1971
- Translator: The Tomtit In The Rain, By Erzsi Gazdas (With Mátyás Sárközi), 1971
- Ed.: Crabbe, 1973
- Ed.: A Lasting Joy, 1973
- Poems Of C. Day Lewis 1925-1972, 1977
- Posthumous Poems, 1979