ABSTRACT

The unlikely relationship between Rolf Gardiner and the pacifist poet Max Plowman is documented in a correspondence that starts in 1927 and ends in 1939. Plowman was after all one of Britain's most prominent pacifists, a leading figure in the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) from its inception until his early death in 1941. Yet in 1939 Gardiner was invited to publish in Plowman's journal, The Adelphi, a crucial organ of pacifist thought. Published evidence of the Gardiner-Plowman connection can be found in the posthumous book of letters edited by Max Plowman's widow Dorothy, Bridge into the Future. Max Plowman has not been well served by history. There is no biography, and very little academic writing about him. Born in London in 1883, Plowman published four volumes of poetry between 1913 and 1920. In 1930 Plowman disclosed one of the subjects of that meeting with Lawrence to Mrs. J. Wood, who had previously been called Jessie Chambers.