Nimbus: A Magazine of Literature, the Arts, and New Ideas

Nimbus, a British little magazine of the 1950s, represents part of a rich history of literary magazines that reflect not only the literary, but also the social and political history of England. Nimbus continued as well a tradition of modernism cultivated since World War I, especially by writers of the Bloomsbury group and the Auden generation. Nimbus was among such important little magazines as Encounter, London Magazine, and Poetry (London) edited by such distinguished writers as T. S. Eliot, John Lehmann, and Stephen Spender, that helped set a tone of excellence in the publication of little magazines and were instrumental in changing the mood and direction of modern British literature.

Nimbus: A Magazine of Literature, the Arts, and New Ideas began publication in December 1951 as a quarterly magazine of new writing. Tristram Hull, son of the poet R. F. C. Hull, acted as editor for the magazine's four volumes of thirteen issues. Hull was later joined by co-editors Ivo Jarosy, 1953-1954, and David Wright, 1955-1956. Due to editorial differences between Wright and Hull, Christopher Logue, in 1957, became co-editor with Hull and the name of the magazine was changed to Nimbus: New English Review .

The magazine, published by John Trafford at the Halcyon Press, grew in size, stature, and reputation from a fifteen page experiment into a sixty page provocative venue for new British, Commonwealth, and Continental writing. Nimbus editors rejected strict identification with any one contemporary British literary school, yet often found themselves involved in their debates and controversies. Nimbus attempted to distance itself from such recognized Movement poets as Kingsley Amis. The Movement poets were themselves reacting against the earlier romantic New Apocalypse writers such as George Baker, G. S. Fraser, and Henry Treece. The Movement writers were, in turn, considered by the Maverick poets to be conservative, formalist, and neoclassical.

Among the newer and Maverick writers published in Nimbus were Dannie Abse (also editor of Poetry and Poverty ), Michael Hastings, Patrick Kavanagh, George MacBeth, Colin MacInnes, Vernon Scannell, Stevie Smith, and Alexander Trocchi (also editor of Merlin ). Other distinguished and renowned writers published in Nimbus include W. H. Auden, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Cocteau, Mircea Eliade, T. S. Eliot, Jean Genet, C. G. Jung, Pablo Neruda, and Richard Wilbur. Nimbus ceased publication in 1958 due, it has been suggested, to financial constraints and lack of editorial focus.

For more information about Nimbus see:

Sullivan, Alvin. British Literary Magazines: The Modern Age 1914-1984.

Greenwood Press: New York, 1986.

From the guide to the Nimbus Magazine Records TXRC94-A20., 1945-1962, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)