ABSTRACT
In the years immediately before World War II, British surrealism needed to gather its forces. For various exhibitions, a number of 'fellow travellers' had convened around the initial group. This was especially so at the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition in November 1937, where more than two thirds of the participants were just guests or 'temporary members'. Consequently, both the pressure of outside political events, and a certain theoretical laxity, now threatened the unity of the group. While it was crucial that surrealism should be able to rally as many supporters as possible, as part of the process of formalization, this needed to be counterbalanced by a degree of recentring. When Penrose drafted the list of the members of the group on 14 July 1938, they numbered 38. A third of these, including Dylan Thomas, Edward Burra, Ceri Richards's wife Frances Clayton, Elizabeth McWilliam, Eric J. Smith, Onion S. Playfair and one Dr James B. Coltman, were far from deeply committed. British surrealism was in need of a basis and a firm centre. Flerbert Read could not be relied on to provide this, on account of his flirtation with officialdom and his jumping from communism to anarchism and Trotskyism, and back again.
