George Allen Upward (Worcester 20 September 1863[1] –Wimborne 12 November 1926[2]) was a British poet, lawyer, politician and teacher.His work was included in the first anthology ofImagist poetry,Des Imagistes, which was edited byEzra Pound and published in 1914. He was a first cousin once removed ofEdward Upward. His parents were George and Mary Upward, and he was survived by an elder sister (Mary) Edith Upward.[3]
Upward was brought up as a member of thePlymouth Brethren and trained as a lawyer at the Royal University of Dublin (nowUniversity College Dublin). While living in Dublin, he wrote a pamphlet in favour ofIrish Home Rule.
In the 1890s he lived in Cardiff where he worked as a lawyer, journalist and novelist. He also stood several times unsuccessfully as a candidate for both the Liberal and Labour party. He defendedHavelock Wilson and other Labour leaders and ran for election as aLib-Lab candidate, taking 659 votes inMerthyr at the1895 general election.[4]
Upward later worked for theBritish Foreign Office in Nigeria as an officer for the British Government.
He wrote two books of poetry,Songs in Ziklag (1888) andScented Leaves from a Chinese Jar. He also published a translation of theSayings of Confucius (1904) and a volume of autobiography,Some Personalities (1921).
Upward wrote a number of novels:The Prince of Balkistan (1895),A Crown of Straw (1896),A Bride's Madness (1897),The Accused Princess (1900),[5]The International Spy: Being a Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War (1905), andAthelstane Ford. His 1910 novelThe Discovery of the Dead is a collected fantasy (listed in Bleiler) dealing with the emerging science of Necrology.
In 1907, Upward self-published a book (originally written in 1901) that he apparently thought would be Nobel Prize material:The New Word. This book is today known as the first citation of the word"Scientology", however there was no delineation in this book of its definition by Upward. It is unknown whetherL. Ron Hubbard, the founder of theScientology-organization, knew of this book.His 1913 bookThe Divine Mystery is an anthropological study of Christian mythology.
In 1917 theBritish Museum refused to take Upward's manuscripts, "on the grounds that the writer was still alive," and Upward burned them.[6]
Upward shot himself in the heart inWimborne Minster,Dorset, in November 1926.[7] Ezra Pound would a decade later satirically remark that this was due to his disappointment after hearing ofGeorge Bernard Shaw'sNobel Prize award which Shaw won in 1925.
Upward's reputation as an obscure genius, the hidden mastermind behind some of the most obscure thoughts of Ezra Pound and his fellow Imagists was made by two essays Pound wrote in 1913–1914 and various mentions of Upward in hisCantos. In 1975 there was a brief flurry of interest in this view of Upward typified byDonald Davie's piece on Upward in his attempt to revive sympathetic interest in Pound. In 1978 Mick Sheldon published an essay which demonstrated that alongside his relationship with Pound Upward had a reputation as a popular novelist, lawyer, politician and local celebrity. Even more interesting were the discoveries that Upward had influenced Edward Upward, to whom he was related,W. H. Auden whose poemThe Orators refers to Allen's suicide, andRobert Duncan who wrote a lengthy introduction toThe Divine Mystery.Sheldon also revealed that before Pound had begun championing the cause of Allen Upward's genius, a female philosopher calledVictoria Welby had expressed the view that Upward'sThe New Word was a significant contribution to modernist philosophy.
