John Gawsworth

Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong (29 June 1912 – 23 September 1970), better known as John Gawsworth (and also sometimes known as T. I. F. Armstrong), was a British writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, both of poetry and of short stories. He also used the pseudonym Orpheus Scrannel (alludes to Milton's Lycidas). He became the king of Redonda in 1947 and became known as King Juan I.

Armstrong grew up in Colville Gardens, Notting Hill, and at number 40 Royal Crescent, Holland Park. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School.

As a very young man he moved in London literary circles championing more traditional verse and writing against modernism. He ran the Twyn Barlwm Press, a small press publishing some well-known poets, its title inspired by the mountain Twyn Barlwm in South Wales, beloved by one of his literary idols Arthur Machen. Machen was one of the remaining writers of the 1890s he admired and befriended. Gawsworth's longest piece of written work was a biography of Machen, but he could find no publisher for it in the thirties. It was finally published by Tartarus Press in 2005, to much critical acclaim.

Other writers Gawsworth admired were Edgar Jepson and M. P. Shiel, whose literary executor he would later become.

In 1931 he had the poem In Winter by W. H. Davies privately printed in a limited edition of 290 numbered copies, illustrated by Edward Carrick and all individually signed by Davies. A further special limited edition of 15 were printed on handmade paper and also hand-coloured by Carrick. Three companion titles appeared in similar editions at the same time: In Spring by Edith Sitwell, In Summer by Edmund Blunden and In Autumn by Herbert Palmer.

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