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Biographical note on Howard Spring
Robert Howard Spring was born in Cardiff, South Wales in 1889. His father, an itinerant gardener from Co. Cork, and his mother lived in poverty with their nine children in a small 2 bedroomed house.
His father died while he was still at school. His mother would go out scrubbing other peoples doorsteps and taking in their washing to earn some money while he and some of the other children took to selling firewood and rhubarb. He also found a Saturday job for 16 hours a day at a greengrocer. When was 12 years old he left school and started work as an errand boy at a butcher's shop which he hated.
His next job was as office boy with an accountant four miles from home in Cardiff Docks, a journey he walked each day. He was there for a year and learned how to use a typewriter. He then found a post at the South Wales Daily News as a messenger boy and here he taught himself shorthand and attended night school to improve his education.
He grasped the opportunities for advancement within the newspaper and was soon taking copy from the various reporters before being invited to join the reporting staff himself. After failing to have his first novel accepted he tried his hand at short stories and with his first earnings bought himself an overcoat.
After nine years with this newspaper he transferred to the Yorkshire Observer in Bradford, adding book reviewing to his talents. In early 1915 he obtained a reporter's job at the Manchester Guardian where he was to work for 15 years. He was unfit for active service during WW1 but joined the Army Service Corps and held every rank up to and including that of Warrant Officer, mainly attached to the Intelligence Department. His one surviving brother was killed at Arras.
In 1919 he met his future wife Marion and they married in March, 1920. He
spent some time in Ireland reporting on the troubles between Great Britain
and Sinn Fein and was present at the fall of the Four Courts and the
bombardment of the rebel headquarters in Sackville Street. *
(* Source: Biographical note by publisher on
dustjacket of first edition of 'Shabby Tiger')
Marion introduced him to Cornwall where she had spent her childhood holidays, a county which was to figure largely in his novels and to which they would eventually move.
By 1931 his work had been noticed nationally and he was invited to work for the Evening Standard in London and became their book reviewer, succeeding J. B. Priestley and Arnold Bennett. His only published book at this stage, Darkie and Co., had been written for his children and he had sold all rights in it for £50.00.
Reviewing new books gave him confidence to try writing a novel again and his first, Shabby Tiger (1934), was accepted by the publisher Collins. It's moderate success was enough to encourage the sequel, Rachel Rosing (1935).
His major success came with O Absalom! (1938), his first novel set in Cornwall. Renamed My Son, My Son! for the American market this title was later adopted for the UK reprints. This andhis next novel, Fame is the Spur (1940), received critical acclaim and film rights to both were sold, putting Spring on a sound financial footing. After the publication of O Absalom! he was able to give up journalism and he and his wife moved to Mylor in Cornwall.
In August 1941 he received a strange request to leave England for three weeks to an undisclosed destination. He agreed and it turned out that he was to accompany the entourage of Winston Churchill, with H. V. Morton, on the battleship Prince of Wales to Newfoundland for the meeting with President Roosevelt. He covered the incident in his second volume of autobiography 'In the Meantime' (1942) and there is a fuller account in H. V. Morton's 'Atlantic Meeting' (1943).
Hard Facts (1944) and Dunkerleys (1946) followed and in 1947 they moved from Mylor to Falmouth. Novels continued to appear at regular intervals and he was reviewing books for Country Life when in the early 1960's he had a minor stroke and lost the use of his right hand. He recovered enough to write his last novel, Winds of the Day (1964) but had a further stroke and died 3rd May, 1965.
Bibliography of the UK works of Howard Spring in Date order
Original works
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1969 Oxford University Press reprint |
Darkie and Co.|
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1950 Collins reprint |
Shabby Tiger|
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1943 Collins reprint |
Rachel Rosing|
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1964 Faber and Faber edition |
Sampson's Circus|
Book Parade |
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1939 Collins reprint |
O Absalom! (later My Son, My
Son!)|
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1939 1st UK edition |
Heaven Lies about Us|
Tumbledown Dick: All People and No
Plot |
|
All They Like Sheep |
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1944 Collins reprint |
Fame is the Spur|
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1942 1st UK edition |
In the Meantime: Reminiscences|
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1944 1st UK edition |
Hard Facts|
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1946 1st UK edition |
And Another Thing|
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1946 1st UK edition |
Dunkerleys|
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1948 1st UK edition |
The Houses In Between|
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1948 1st UK edition |
There is No Armour|
Christians Awake |
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Christmas Honeymoon |
|
Jinny Morgan |
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1953 1st UK edition |
A Sunset Touch|
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1953 1st UK edition |
Three Plays|
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1955 1st UK edition |
These Lovers Fled Away|
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1957 1st UK edition |
Time and the Hour|
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1959 1st UK edition |
All the Day Long|
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1961 1st UK edition |
I Met a Lady|
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1964 1st UK edition |
Winds of the Day|
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1972 1st UK edition |
The Autobiography of Howard
Spring|
Eleven Stories and a Beginning |
Associated works
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1939 1st (and only) edition |
Christmas Honeymoon (in The Queens Book of
the Red Cross)|
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1964 1st UK edition |
Memories and Gardens by Marion Howard
Spring|
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1967 1st UK edition |
Howard by Marion Howard Spring|
Frontispiece by Marion Howard
Spring |
End of list