George Reavey

George Reavey (1 May 1907 – 11 August 1976) was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. He was also Samuel Beckett's first literary agent. In addition to his own poetry, Reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century Russian poetry to an English-speaking audience. He was also the first publisher to bring out a collection of English translations of the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard.

Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of Reavey's literary career was his claim, made to the New York press and to British editor and publisher Alan Clodd, that he had written The Painted Bird for Jerzy Kosiński.

Reavey's father, Daniel Reavey, was a flax engineer from Belfast and his mother, Sophia Turchenko, was Russian. He was born in Vitebsk and the family moved to Nizhni Novgorod in 1909, where the young poet was educated and became a fluent Russian speaker. When Daniel was arrested in 1919, during the Russian Civil War, mother and son fled to Belfast.

Reavey attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution until 1921, at which point the family moved to Fulham, London. Here he attended the Sloan School. He spent the summer holidays in Belfast, where he recorded folk ballads and Gaelic poetry in a series of notebooks. In 1926, he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied history and literature. The became associated with the group of Cambridge writers associated with the magazine Experiment, including William Empson, Jacob Bronowski, Charles Madge, Kathleen Raine and Julian Trevelyan. He contributed prose and poetry to Experiment along with translations from Boris Pasternak.

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