Hayward, John, 1905-1965

John Hayward was a writer and editor, probably best known as friend and advisor to T.S. Eliot. Born in London and educated at King's College, Hayward was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in his youth and contended with the crippling disease throughout his life. He quickly developed a reputation for editing poetry anthologies, and was an insightful literary critic. He authored various other works, but his most notable contribution to literature was as co-founder and editor of The Book Collector. Hayward maintained many literary friendships, but is probably best remembered for his contributions to the work of T.S. Eliot, to whom he lent encouragement as well as practical and creative advice.

Epithet: Mrs

John Hayward (1905-1965) was the first editor of The Book Collector, founded in 1952 by Hayward, Percy Muir, and Ian Fleming. The Times (18 September 1965, published in The Book Collector volume noted below) described him as "an anthologist, critic and editor whose enthusiasm, judgment and scholarship made him outstanding in his generation among connoisseurs of good writing and good book production ... He will be particularly remembered as a textual expert - he produced, among other works of scholarship, admirable Nonesuch editions of Donne and Swift - and for his exceptionally wide knowledge, reflected in his editing, of English literature especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of French literature." He was a close friend of T.S. Eliot's. For a collection of memorials to Hayward, see "John Hayward 1904-1965. Some Memories," The Book Collector 14 4 (Winter 1965): 443-486.

Henry Pettit was Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He was named Honorary Curator of Rare Books in Norlin Library in the early 1950's, managing the collections and encouraging the acquisition of such materials as eighteenth-century English literature and examples of early printing. Pettit was a scholar of the English poet Edward Young (1683-1765), compiling A Bibliography of Young's Night Thoughts (1954) and editing The Correspondence of Edward Young (1971).

John Davy Hayward was born on 2nd February 1905. He was educated at Gresham's School and in France before coming up to King's in 1923. He studied English and Modern Languages; during his time at King's he edited the 'Collected Works of the Earl of Rochester', published while he was still an undergraduate. After graduation in 1927 he lived in London, working as an editor, critic, anthologist and bibliographer. He edited many of Jonathan Swift's works. He shared a house with close friend T. S. Eliot for 11 years from 1946, acting as his critic and gathering together his papers - Hayward styled himself 'Keeper of the Eliot Archive'. Their friendship lapsed on Eliot's surprise marriage to his secretary in 1957. Hayward suffered from muscular dystrophy from his undergraduate days; he died in 1965, a few months after Eliot. He bequeathed his collection of Eliot's papers to King's College.

For further biographical information about John Davy Hayward, the reader is directed to the obituary of John Davy Hayward in 'King's College Annual Report', 1965, pp. 30-33.