John Middleton Murry
See also his son, John Middleton Murry Jr.
John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. A prominent critic, Murry is best remembered for his association with Katherine Mansfield, whom he married in 1918 as her second husband, for his friendship with D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, and for his friendship (and brief affair) with Frieda Lawrence. Following Mansfield's death, Murry edited her work.
Murry was married four times: first to Katherine Mansfield in 1918; after her death in 1923 he arranged the publishing or republishing of her works. In 1924 he married Violet Le Maistre, in 1932 Ada Elizabeth Cockbaine, and in 1954 Mary Gamble. With his second wife, Violet Le Maistre, he had two children: a daughter,
Katherine Middleton Murry
who became a writer and published "Beloved Quixote: The Unknown Life of John Middleton Murry" in 1986, and a son, John Middleton Murry, Jr., who became a writer under the names of Colin Murry and Richard Cowper. There were also two children of the third marriage.
“The Dream of a Queer Fellow I write the words again and they appear doubly pregnant with meaning. It is a true and terrible phrase : true, because we are all queer fellows dreaming ; and we are queer just because we dream ; terrible, because of the vastness of the unknown which it carries within itself, because it sets loose the tremendous and awful question : What if we are only queer fellows dreaming ? What if behind the veil the truth is leering and jeering at our queerness and our dreams? What if the queer fellow of the story were right, before he dreamed ? What if it were really all the same?What if it were all the same not once but a million times, life after life, world after world, the same pain, the same doubt, the same dreams? The queer fellow went but one day's journey along the eternal recurrence which threatens human minds and human destinies. When he returned he was queer. There was another man went the same journey. Friedrich Nietzsche dreamed this very dream in the mountains of the Engadine. When he returned he too was queer.”
“In literature there is no such thing as a pure thought; in literature, thought is always the handmaid of emotion.”