Squire, J C
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1884-1958) UK author, poet, essayist, historian and literary editor whose health barred him from active service in World War One, though he was active in the Home Guard; he also wrote as by Solomon Eagle. Some of his fiction – like "The March of Progress" about Atlantis, in The Gold Tree (coll 1917 chap) – was of modest sf interest; some of the Parodies assembled in Imaginary Speeches (coll 1912) and Steps to Parnassus (coll 1913), the second published by his own firm, are executed in impossible contexts. He also collaborated with John L Balderston on the Timeslip fantasy play Berkeley Square (1928 chap).
Squire is of particular sf interest for editing the seminal Alternate History story and essay anthology If It had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History (anth 1931; vt If: or History Rewritten 1931; exp 1972), which assembles a series of Thought Experiments, most first published here, each extrapolating from a Jonbar Point. Among the contributions are his own squib, "If It Had Been Discovered in 1930 That Bacon Really Did Write Shakespeare" (see Shakespeare), and Winston S Churchill's "If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg" (December 1930 Scribner's). The 1972 reissue adds two further contributions, one by the noted historian A J P Taylor (1906-1990) and one, "If Napoleon had Won the Battle of Waterloo" (July 1907 Westminster Gazette) by G M Trevelyan. Squire was knighted in 1933. [DRL/JC]
Sir John Collings Squire
born Plymouth, Devon: 2 April 1884
died Rushlake Green, Warbleton, Sussex: 20 December 1958
works
- Imaginary Speeches; And Other Parodies in Prose and Verse (London: Stephen Swift and Company, 1912) [coll: hb/]
- Steps to Parnassus; And Other Parodies and Diversions (London: Howard Latimer Limited, 1913) [coll: hb/]
- The Gold Tree (London: Martin Secker, 1917) [coll: chap: hb/nonpictorial]
works as editor
- If It had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History (London: Longmans, Green, 1931) [anth: hb/]
- If: or History Rewritten (New York: The Viking Press, 1931) [anth: rev vt of above: hb/]
- If It had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971) [anth: exp of original editions above: hb/nonpictorial]
about the author
- Richard J Evans. Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History (London: Little, Brown and Company, 2014) [nonfiction: hb/]
links
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