Unwin, Stanley
Entry updated 26 September 2020. Tagged: Author.
(1911-2002) South African-born broadcaster, comedian and author, in UK from 1914; best-known for his creation of a comically distorted version of English, a gobbledegookish patter not dissimilar to the effect of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", which first appeared in Through the Looking-Glass (1871). The Linguistic distortion is superficial but cumulatively compelling; through its mildly antic effect, a sense of an underlying Absurdist SF sensibility can be detected in The Miscillian Manuscript: A Demented Journey to the Lost Isles (graph 1961) with Roy Dewar, which describes to some Satirical purpose a Utopia housed at the heart of a lost Island. Travellers' descriptions of this hidden enclave turn out to have been difficult to unpack: "What evident there is has been by word or mouse, garnered from the four corms of the earthlobe." [JC]
Stanley Unwin
born Pretoria, South Africa: 7 June 1911
died Daventry, Northamptonshire: 12 January 2002
works (selected)
- The Miscillian Manuscript: A Demented Journey to the Lost Isles (London: Cassell, 1961) with Roy Dewar [graph: illus/hb/Roy Dewar]
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