Leon, Derrick, 1908-1944

Derrick Lewis Leon was born in London, England in 1908 and was only 36 years old when he died in November 1944. Leon made his living as an interior decorator. By the time of his death, however, he had a reputation as a fine biographer with works on Tolstoy (Tolstoy: his life and Work) and Proust (Proust: His Life, His Circle, and His Work. Leon had also published three novels before his death. The first one, Livingstones: A Novel of Contemporary Life was published in 1933. Wilderness was published in 1935 and Green for a Season was published in 1938. Derrick Leon's last work was Ruskin: The Great Victorian, published in 1949. This biography throws new light onto John Ruskin's personal tragedies as well as his public life and his work. Leon died before he could revise his first draft of this work. In order to respect the labor that Leon put into the biography, it was published subject only to a quotation check and grammatical corrections performed by his brother George Leon.

From the guide to the Derrick Leon Typescript, 1949, (Ohio University)

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