A gorgeous addition to the growing interest in David Jones, lavishly illustrated with his dreamy engravings and watercolours... Dilworth's meticulous, richly detailed biography is the perfect introduction to a notoriously difficult poet and a painter with a lightness of touch to stand beside Marc Chagall and Raoul Dufy. -- Claire Lowdon * Sunday Times, 2017 Books of the Year *
Pretty well the perfect biography. It does justice to an artist who has been quite unaccountably overlooked by posterity; perhaps being a genius in several modes - painting, engraving, poetry - confuses critics... A wonderful life. -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard, Books of the Year *
It is lavishly illustrated and wonderfully well written. * Observer, 2017 Books of the Year *
Thomas Dilworth, the leading scholar of Jones's work, has already devoted several books to re-establishing his genius. Now, David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet - a biography 30 years in the making - offers the fullest portrait we are ever likely to have. Thanks to Dilworth's fastidious attention to detail (a quality he shares with his subject), it is an enormously absorbing read, full of the curious life of the imagination and the colour-tinting of anecdote. -- Jeremy Noel-Tod * Daily Telegraph *
This biography is a landmark. It would be good if it stirred an interest not only in Jones as an artist and poet, but in the questions he faced about modernity: what happens to art in a culture where each thing is no more than itself, or its market price? -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman *
This first full biography is most welcome... Dilworth's narrative sympathetically illuminates the workings of a troubled, original mind, its interplay with mid-20th century English intellectual life, and its continuing resonance... Dilworth's portrayal of a man for whom every object evoked meaning, usually anxiety, is affecting, sometimes comic... A mostly inner life... whose turbulence Dilworth describes with sensitive nuance. -- Jackie Wullschlager * Financial Times *
Thomas Dilworth is the leading Jones scholar... Beautifully produced and sumptuously illustrated, this admiring biography eclipses in its thoroughness, previous accounts of Jones's life, and its accumulation of detail, ranging from the make of Jones's underpants (Jaeger) to the precise dimensions of rooms he lodged in, is unlikely to be surpassed. -- John Carey * The Sunday Times *
A major biography... Dilworth is a brilliant describer and analyst of the art; his descriptions would make individual works vivid to the reader even if they weren't reproduced in this richly illustrated book. -- Chris Power * Guardian *
Thomas Dilworth's biography is the work of a lifetime. It has been worth waiting for... Once bitten by the Jones enthusiasm, the reader will find everything of interest. No detail is too trivial... Apart from his great skill in expounding the poetry, and his intuitive knowledge and love of the visual art, Dilworth is memorably intelligent and sensitive in describing Jones's many intense and emotional relationships with women... [A] wonderful book. -- A. N. Wilson * Spectator *
This sense of a man unmoored in time is richly explored by Thomas Dilworth in his new biography... He is an expert teaser of meaning from Jones's elusive, allusive art... There was something other-worldly about Jones and Dilworth draws out his oddness and visionary intelligence in this moving biography. -- Laura Freeman * Standpoint *
Those interested in Jones's art (his dreamy watercolours, his masterly engravings), or in his singular poetry (the great work is In Parenthesis, a modernist epic inspired by his experiences in the trenches that T. S. Eliot regarded as a masterpiece), will not be disappointed with the careful, delicate way Dilworth connects them to his confounding story. But the real joy of this book is not analytic. It is that it makes Jones so vivid. Sweet, eccentric and unexpectedly comical, there are moments when it is almost as if you can smell him. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *
David Jones? To Stravinsky he was a writer of genius, and Kenneth Clarke once called him the best modern painter... Thomas Dilworth's new biography, David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet provides an excellent introduction to this multitalented creator's life and imagination... While his life was hard and never entirely free of post-traumatic stress disorder, David Jones now has - thanks to Thomas Dilworth - a biography worthy of his originality and genius. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post *
This long-considered life, condensed from a much larger work available online, fleshes out with sympathy the subtleties of character and full creative range of a rare and distinguished man. -- Ariane Bankes * Literary Review *
It's ever so rarely you get a perfect biography, a marvelous match of subject and writer - but Thomas Dilworth's biography of David Jones is just that. It's not just a full account of a man but a compelling argument as to why Jones should be admired by us as he was by his contemporaries... Jones never trusted biographers who were too prolific, who didn't live the life of their subject: well, Thomas Dilworth has done just that. -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard *
I would like to have done anything as good as David Jones has done. -- Dylan Thomas
Of major importance...One of the most distinguished writers of my generation. -- T. S. Eliot
A writer of genius. -- Igor Stravinsky
I admire his writing, as also his painting and drawing. I think he is a great poet, and I respond deeply to his work. -- Henry Moore
An extraordinary writer. -- Seamus Heaney
The greatest native British poet of the century. -- Hugh MacDiarmid
Absolutely unique, a remarkable genius. -- Kenneth Clark
Jones has too long been neglected... This new biography gives us a full portrait of Jones - as man, artist and poet... Well-researched and well-written... Dilworth is also an astute interpreter of Jones's visual work... His work, especially engravings and inscriptions, which combine different typefaces, languages and spacing, was meant to be a sensory and not solely intellectual experience. As the centenaries of World War I are remembered, it is time to recover Jones's works of genius and historical imagination. -- Gerald Russello * Catholic Herald *
I was simply in heaven reading this dense and authoritative biography, which is - importantly - lavishly illustrated. -- Max Porter * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year *
David Jones, described here by his biographer Thomas Dilworth as the lost great modernist, has slipped through the floorboards of history... Dilworth traces Jones's decline in the 1960s and 1970s, but transmutes this chronicle of growing indigence and overlooked genius into an oddly cheering narrative. His love of his subject is both clear and wildly infectious. * Prospect *
Dilworth has long been regarded the leading authority on Jones. He not only brings years of research to this biography but also great depth of understanding. He makes vivid Jones's life and character. -- Frances Spalding * Apollo *
