Orage, A.R. (Alfred Richard), 1873-1934

Alfred Orage was born at Dacre, near Bradford in 1873, but following the death of his father, the family moved to Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire. He became a pupil teacher at the village school and then attended a teachers' training college at Culham, Oxfordshire. In 1893 he became an elementary school teacher in Leeds and began to develop wider interests, particularly in literature and socialism, co-founding the Leeds Art Club in 1900. He moved to London in 1906 as a freelance journalist and bought (with the financial backing of George Bernard Shaw and others) a weekly review, the New Age, which he edited until 1922. In 1923 Orage began to work on behalf of George Gurdjieff and subsequently went to America, where in 1927 he married for a second time: Jessie Richards Dwight, daughter of a dealer in building supplies, from Albany. He returned to England in 1930 and in 1932 founded the New English Weekly, which he edited until his death in 1934.

From the guide to the Papers and books relating to the life and work of Alfred R. Orage, together with books from the library of his wife, Jessie Orage, 1896-1981, (GB 206 Leeds University Library)

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