Frank Vigor Morley

Frank Vigor Morley (4 January 1899 – 8 October 1980) was an American mathematician, author, editor and publishing executive. As had his two older brothers, Christopher and Felix, Morley attended Haverford College and then studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Morley worked in book publishing in London and New York and co-founded the publishing firm Faber and Faber where he became a close friend of poet T.S. Eliot.

Life

Morley was born 4 January 1899 in Haverford, Pennsylvania[1] where his father Frank Morley was Professor of Mathematics at Haverford College. In 1900 his father was named chairman of the mathematics department at Johns Hopkins University and the family removed to Baltimore, Maryland.[2] As had his two, older brothers, Christopher and Felix, Frank returned to Haverford College for his undergraduate education which, however, was interrupted in 1917 when Morley left school to serve as 2nd lieutenant in an Engineering unit based at Hog Island, Philadelphia, during World War I.[3][4]

Morley received his A.B. in 1918 from The Johns Hopkins University.[5][6] As did both his brothers, Frank won a Rhodes Scholarship and attended New College, Oxford, thus forming the only family of three brothers to receive this prestigious scholarship.[7] Frank V. earned a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford in 1923.[8] Morley remained in England, working at the Times literary Supplement, and then as London manager for the publishers of The Century Magazine.[9] Geoffrey Faber hired Morley in 1929 to be co-director of the newly re-organized publishing firm bearing his name Faber and Faber.[10] In this capacity Morley worked with and became close friends with T.S. Eliot, then an editor at Faber and Faber. Morley assisted Eliot in quickly finding new residential accommodations when Eliot separated from his wife.[11] Eliot wrote the poem "Cows" for Morley's children.[12]

In 1933 Morley and his father Frank Morley published the "stimulating volume," Inversive Geometry.[13][14] The book develops complex numbers as a tool for geometry and function theory.

In 1939 Morley left London for New York to become Vice-President, and Director of the Trade Editorial Department at Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.[15] Shortly thereafter Harcourt published My Sister and I by Dirk van der Heide (published January 1941), the story of the German blitzkrieg and bombing of Rotterdam ostensibly written by an 11 year old refugee to England and thence to the United States. My Sister and I enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success, but in the 1980s was discovered to have been a literary fabrication conducted by Harcourt, under Morley's supervision, to encourage American participation in World War II, possibly with guidance or encouragement from British intelligence services.[16] During the war, Morley also served on the National War Labor Board.[17] Following the war, Morley returned to England to become Director of the publisher Eyre & Spottiswood from which he ultimately retired.[18][19]

Literary Connections

As an editor and publisher, Morley enjoyed a wide correspondence and friendships with many prominent authors and literary figures of the day in addition to T.S. Eliot. These included Ezra Pound, Lewis Mumford, and Walter De la Mare, as well as Morley's eldest brother Christopher who was a notable author and powerful promoter of literature. It was Frank Morley who suggested to Ezra Pound in 1933 that Pound write an autobiography, which resulted in Pound's 1938 work A Guide to Kulchur.[20] Morley's literary correspondence is now held chiefly by the New York Public Library Berg Collection [21]

With his brother Christopher, Frank V. had long been an admirer of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Christopher originated The Baker Street Irregulars in 1934 as an informal meeting of his friends and others interested in Holmes, but in order to restrict membership to those who were truly knowledgeable if not expert in the stories, and eliminate mere casual readers of Conan Doyle, a membership test in the form of a crossword puzzle was devised by Frank V. Morley. This was published in Christopher's "Bowling Green" column in the May 1934 issue of the Saturday Review of Literature.[22]

Morley traveled widely throughout England before and after the Second World War, incorporating his reading and observations into a number of non-fiction works of literary history and tourism, the last of which, Literary Britain,was published only days before his death on 8 October 1980 at age 82 in Buckinghamshire, England.[23]

Personal life

Morley married Christina McLeod Innes 14 May 1925. They had two sons and two daughters: Donald, Oliver, Peregrine, and Susannah.[24]

Works
  • Travels in East Anglia Travels in East Anglia] (New York: Harcourt, [1923]) now available from HathiTrust
  • Dora Wordsworth: Her Book (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925)
  • Whaling North and South with J.S. Hodgson (New York: Century, 1926)
  • East South East (London: Longmans, 1929)
  • Lamb before Elia (London: J. Cape, 1932)
  • Inversive Geometry (with father Frank Morley), (New York: Ginn & Co., 1933) now available from HathiTrust
  • War Paint, a Story of Adventure (London: Faber & Faber, 1936) published in the United States as The Wreck of the Active (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1936)
  • My One Contribution to Chess (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1945) now available from HathiTrust
  • Death in Dwelly Lane (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952)
  • The Great North Road: A Journey in History (New York: Macmillan, 1961)
  • “A Few Recollections of Eliot.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 74, no. 1, 1966, pp. 110–133. now available from JSTOR Accessed 18 Oct. 2020.
  • The Long Road West: A Journey in History (London: Chatto & Windus, New York: Dial Press, 1971)
  • Literary Britain: A Reader's Guide to Its Writers and Landmarks (New York: Harper & Row, 1980)

References
  1. Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College... 1833 - 1922 (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Alumni Association, 1922), p. 693.
  2. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
  3. Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College... 1833 - 1922 (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Alumni Association, 1922), p. 693.
  4. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
  5. Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College... 1833 - 1922 (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Alumni Association, 1922), p. 693.
  6. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
  7. Helen McK. Oakley, Three Hours for Lunch: The Life and Time of Christopher Morley (Searingtown, New York: Watermill Publishers, 1976), p. 27.
  8. "Frank Morley -- In Memoriam" American Mathematical Society Bulletin ( March 1938) p. 167. Accessed 18 October 2020
  9. The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930-1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 87
  10. Jonathan Galassi, "The Unlikely History of Faber & Faber," in The New Yorker, 23 July 2019 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unlikely-history-of-faber-and-faber Accessed 18 October 2020.
  11. The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930-1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 87
  12. https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/who-f-w-morley-person-who-eliot-said-he-indebted-320833 Accessed 19 October 2020.
  13. Snyder, Virgil (1934). "Review: Frank Morley and F. V. Morley, Inversive Geometry". Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 40 (5): 374–375. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1934-05848-8.
  14. Henry Forder (1934) Review:Inversive Geometry, The Mathematical Gazette 18:127–9
  15. Helen McK. Oakley, Three Hours for Lunch: The Life and Time of Christopher Morley (Searingtown, New York: Watermill Publishers, 1976), p. 293.
  16. Sheldon Winkler, "My Sister and I: the True Story" in The Music of World War II: War Songs and Their Stories (Hoosick Falls, New York: Merriam Press, 2019) pp. 21-28.
  17. The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930-1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 87
  18. The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volume 5: 1930-1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 87
  19. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
  20. "Anderson Araujo, "Introduction" in A Companion to Ezra Pound's Guide to Kulcher: Guide to Kulcher (pp. 1-18). Liverpool University Press, 2018. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/companion-to-ezra-pounds-guide-to-kulcher/introduction/C46EC8FD4CEC7499E8685CA0F770D97B Accessed 18 October 2020
  21. Finding Aid and Description of the F.V. Morley Collection, New York Public Library Accessed 18 October 2020
  22. Helen McK. Oakley, Three Hours for Lunch: The Life and Time of Christopher Morley (Searingtown, New York: Watermill Publishers, 1976), pp. 224-232.
  23. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
  24. obituary "Frank V. Morley, Author and Retired Publishing Executive," The Baltimore Sun 9 October 1980, p. 10
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