J.R. Ackerley

Joseph Randolph Ackerley, also known as J.R. Ackerley or Joe Ackerley, was a British author and editor. He was born at Herne Hill on 4 November, 1896.  Ackerley attended Rossall School and later served in the British Army in World War I and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1917.  It was during his time as a prisoner of war that he first became aware of his homosexuality, and was quite open about it for the rest of his life.  In 1923 he traveled to India and became the personal secretary of the Maharajah of Chatarpur, a post for which he was recommended by an old friend, E.M. Forster.   The Maharajah was himself gay and maintained a relationship with one of his servants.  Ackerley later wrote a fictionalized account of his years as the Maharajah's secretary, Hindoo Holiday (1932), one of the earliest modern novels to deal frankly with homosexuality.   Eventually ending his tenure with the Maharajah, Ackerley returned to England to continue his education, graduating with a degree in law from Cambridge in 1925. Around this same time, he wrote the play Prisoners of War,  the first play produced in London which presented love between men.   The play's cast included James Whale, who also designed the sets. In 1928 Ackerley began working for the BBC and in 1935 began a twenty-four year career editing its magazine, The Listener, where he helped promote the works of W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, as well as many other promising young writers.  Soon after his father died in 1929, Ackerley learned that he had led a double life, supporting a second family, and had even been the kept lover of a German count. Ackerley's reflections on this shocking turn of events, and on his own homosexuality, formed the basis for his posthumously published My Father and Myself (1968), a bitingly witty work which explored how even the closest of people may never truly know or understand each other. Ackerley spent his entire life in a futile search for what he described as "The Perfect Friend."  He settled instead for the loyal friendship of his dog Queenie, which inspired his other major works, My Dog Tulip (1956), and We Think the World of You (1960).  Ackerley also consoled himself with the favors of several guardsmen, sailors, and policemen. It was one of these policemen, Bob Buckingham, whom Ackerley introduced to E.M. Forster.  The fifty-year love between Buckingham and Forster would inspire Forster's novel, Maurice.  Though Ackerley is often described as a "minor literary figure," his influence on the works and careers of many of the most celebrated writers in gay literature in particular, and English literature in general, could hardly be described as minor. Ackerley insured that this support for the lietrary arts would continue after his death after willing his fortunes to the English Centre of International PEN to fund its annual prize in autobiography, The J.R. Ackerley Prize. Ackerley died on 4 June, 1967. Selected Works The Prisoners of War (play, 1925) Hindoo Holiday (novel, 1932) My Dog Tulip (novel, 1956) We Think the World of You (W.H. Smith Prize winner, novel, 1960) My Father and Myself (autobiography, 1968) Micheldever and Other Poems (anthology) E.M. Forster: A Portrait (biography) Escapers All; 'the Personal Narratives of Fifteen Escapers from War-Time Prison Camps 1914-1918' (introductory essay)   External links: JR Ackerley - My Father and Myself Wikipedia Entry   Entry revised 8 December, 2004. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details).