Nichols, Robert
Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1893-1944) UK poet, playwright and author whose lyrical talent did not survive the end of World War One, in which he served, becoming famous for the war poems assembled in Invocations (coll 1915 chap); from 1920 he wrote plays, verse epics and some fiction. The Smile of the Sphinx (1920 chap), a fantasy, was later revised and assembled in Romances of Idea, Volume One: Fantastica: Being the Smile of the Sphinx and Other Tales of Imagination (coll 1923). The largest item in that volume, the book-length "Golgotha & Co", Equipoisal with fantasy and the Scientific Romance, is set some time after World War Two and assaults capitalist dreams of the Earthly paradise; the Wandering Jew (who is also a defiant Antichrist) appears and the Messiah is recrucified (off-stage). No second volume of the "Romances" appeared. Under the Yew (August 1928 Argosy; 1928 chap) is a moral fable touching on the fantastic. Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza on a Pressing Theme (performed 1928; 1929) with Maurice Brown (1881-1955), a play in the form of a Scientific Romance, features the nephew of a UK prime minister who gains the secret of Nuclear Energy but is killed before he can use his Invention to cause the End of the World. [JC]
Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols
born Shanklin, Isle of Wight: 6 September 1893
died Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: 17 December 1944
works
- The Smile of the Sphinx (London: Beaumont Press, 1920) [chap: illus/Ethelbert White: hb/]
- Romances of Idea, Volume One: Fantastica: Being the Smile of the Sphinx and Other Tales of Imagination (London: Chatto and Windus, 1923) [coll: including "Golgotha & Co": hb/nonpictorial]
- Under the Yew (place not given: for the author, 1928) [novella: chap: published later in 1928 by Covici-Friede: hb/nonpictorial]
- Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza on a Pressing Theme (New York: Covici-Friede, 1929) [play: first performed 10 December 1928 Martin Beck Theatre, New York: hb/]
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