George Woodcock

George Woodcock (May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writing. In 1959 he was the founding editor of the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is most commonly known outside Canada for his book Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements.

Life Woodcock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but moved with his parents to England at an early age, attending Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow and Morley College. Though his family was quite poor, his grandfather offered to pay his tuition if he went to Cambridge University which he turned down due to the condition that he undertake seminary training for the Anglican clergy. Instead, he took a job as a clerk at the Great Western Railway and it was there that he first became interested in anarchism.

Woodcock remained an anarchist for the rest of his life, writing several books on the subject, including Anarchism, the anthology The Anarchist Reader (1977), and biographies of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde and Peter Kropotkin. It was during these years that he met several prominent literary figures, including T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley, and forging a particularly close relationship with the art theorist Herbert Read. His first published work was The White Island, a collection of poetry, which was issued by Fortune Press in 1940.

Woodcock spent World War II working as a conscientious objector on a farm in Essex, and in 1949, moved to British Columbia. "As a proponent of civil disobedience in accordance with Henry David Thoreau, he followed the principles of Leo Tolstoy, M.K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a pacifist, he dismissed the "folly" of revolutionary violence while emphasizing the need for the convergence of ends and means to prevent a new authoritarianism."

At Camp Angel in Oregon, a camp for conscientious objectors, Woodcock helped found the Untide Press, which sought to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format. Following the war, he returned to Canada, eventually settling in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1955, he took a post in the English department of the University of British Columbia, where he stayed until the 1970s. Around this time he started to write more prolifically, producing several travel books and collections of poetry, as well as the works on anarchism for which he is best known in collaboration with Ivan Avakumović.

Toward the end of his life, Woodcock became increasingly interested in what he saw as the plight of Tibetans. He traveled to India, studied Buddhism, became friends with the Dalai Lama and established the Tibetan Refugee Aid Society. With Inge, his wife, he established Canada India Village Aid, which sponsors self-help projects in rural India. Both organizations exemplify his ideal of voluntary cooperation between people across national boundaries.

The Woodcocks established the Woodcock Fund to support professional Canadian writers. Since 1989, it provides financial assistance to writers in mid-book-project who face unforeseen financial needs that threaten the completion of their books. it is available to writers of fiction, creative non-fiction, plays, and poetry. The initial endowment of the program was in excess of two million dollars, is administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada and by March 2012 had distributed $887,273 to 180 Canadian writers.

George Woodcock died at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on January 28, 1995.

Orwell Woodcock first came to know George Orwell after they had a public disagreement in the pages of the Partisan Review. In his "London Letter" published in the March–April 1942 issue of the review, Orwell had written that in the context of a war against fascism, pacifism was "objectively pro-fascist". As the founder and editor of Now, an "anti-war paper" which Orwell had mentioned in his article as an example of publications that published contributions by both pacifists and fascists, Woodcock took exception to this.

Woodcock and Orwell would both also be active members of the Freedom Defence Committee.

Woodcock later wrote The Crystal Spirit (1966), a critical study of Orwell and his work which won a Governor General's Award. The title is taken from the last line of the poem written by Orwell in memory of the Italian militiaman he met in Barcelona in December 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, a meeting Orwell describes in the opening lines to Homage to Catalonia (1938).

Recognition Woodcock was honoured with several awards, including a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada in 1968, the UBC Medal for Popular Biography in 1973 and 1976, and the Molson Prize in 1973. In 1970, he received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University. He only accepted awards from his peers, refusing several offered by the state, including the Order of Canada. He made one exception in 1994, receiving the Freedom of the City of Vancouver.

A biography, The Gentle Anarchist: A Life of George Woodcock, was released in 1998 by George Fetherling, and a documentary, George Woodcock: Anarchist of Cherry Street, by Tom Shandel and Alan Twigg.

Selected bibliography Anarchy or Chaos – 1944 William Godwin: A biographical study – 1946 The Incomparable Aphra – 1948 The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin – 1950 (with Ivan Avakumović) Ravens and Prophets – 1952 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – 1956 To the City of the Dead: An Account of Travels in Mexico – 1957 Incas and Other Men: Travels in the Andes – 1959 Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements – 1962 Faces of India: A Travel Narrative – 1964 Asia, Gods and Cities: Aden to Tokyo – 1966 The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell – 1966 The Greeks in India – 1966 Kerala: A Portrait of the Malabar Coast – 1967 The Doukhobors – 1968 (with Ivan Avakumovic) Henry Walter Bates: Naturalist of the Amazons – 1969 The British in the Far East – 1969 The British in the Middle East – 1970 The Hudson's Bay Company – 1970 Canada and the Canadians – 1970 Into Tibet: The Early British Explorers – 1971 Victoria – 1971 Gandhi – Fontana Modern Masters, 1972 Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley – 1972 The Rejection of Politics and Other Essays on Canada, Canadians, Anarchism and the World – 1972 Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source – 1973 Who Killed the British Empire?: An Inquest – 1974 Amor de Cosmos: Journalist and Reformer – 1975 Gabriel Dumont: The Métis Chief and his Lost World – 1975 South Sea Journey – 1976 Peoples of the Coast: The Indians of the Pacific Northwest – 1977 The Anarchist Reader – 1977 (editor) Anima, or, Swann Grown Old: A Cycle of Poems – 1977 Two Plays – 1977 Thomas Merton Monk And Poet – A Critical Study – 1978 The World of Canadian Writing: Critiques and Recollections – 1980 100 Great Canadians – 1980 Confederation Betrayed! – 1981 The Meeting of Time and Space: Regionalism in Canadian Literature – 1981 Taking it to the Letter – 1981 Letter to the Past: An Autobiography – 1982 Orwell's Message: 1984 & the Present – 1984 Strange Bedfellows: The State and the Arts in Canada – 1985 The University of British Columbia: A Souvenir – 1986 (with Tim Fitzharris) Northern Spring: The Flowering of Canadian Literature in English – 1987 Caves in the Desert: Travels in China – 1988 The Purdy-Woodcock Letters: Selected Correspondence, 1964–1984 – 1988 William Godwin: A Biographical Study – 1989 A Social History of Canada – 1989 Powers of Observation – 1989 Oscar Wilde: The Double Image – 1989 The Century that Made Us: Canada 1814–1914 – 1989 British Columbia: A History of the Province – 1990 Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana & Other Poems – 1991 Anarchism and Anarchists: Essays – 1992 The Cherry Tree on Cherry Street: And Other Poems – 1994 Marvellous Century: Archaic Man and the Awakening of Reason – 2005