J. R. Ackerley

J. R. Ackerley (November 4, 1896 - June 4, 1967, full legal name Joe Ackerley) was arts editor of The Listener, the arts publication of the BBC, from 1935 to 1959, and an important author in his own right. At The Listener he discovered many young writers who were to become important, including Philip Larkin, whom The Listener was the first to publish. He was one of Francis King's two mentors (the other being C. H. B. Kitchin).

As a writer he was known as an elegant stylist and frank observer; his one novel is also notable for its solid intellectual foundation and its masterly construction. His literary output was slight; he wrote that he was often unable to produce anything despite spending hours at a time trying to. His production may also have been limited by extensive family responsibilities, which, after his father's death, including supporting his sister, mother, and aunt. Furthermore, Ackerley's main aim in life was not literary success, but the desire to find his "Ideal Friend", the great love of his life whom he was never to find. The search for this ideal friend consumed his life for many years, and though he had numerous lovers – he himself estimated, at one point in his memoirMy Father and Myself, there to have been "several hundred", though at another point he suggests the more modest sum of two or three hundred – none of them met his high expectations for the Ideal Friend, though he had a number of long-term relationship.

Ackerley was a well-known "twank," a term used by sailors and guardsmen to describe a man who paid for their sexual services, and he describes in humorous and human detail the ritual of picking up and entertaining a young guardsman, sailor or labourer. My Father and Myself also serves as a good guide to a gay man's understanding of his sexuality in this period, including the (minimal) effect of the scientific literature on this understanding.

His literary output consists of:

• Hindoo Holiday (1932), an account of his brief engagement as secretary to an Indian rajah (the spelling was the publisher's; Ackerley preferred Hindu).
• My Dog Tulip (1956), an account of how he acquired and lived with his dog Queenie (the dog's name was changed when the editors of Commentary, who had purchased an excerpt, became concerned that using the dog's real name might encourage jokes about Ackerley's well-known homosexuality).
• We Think the World of You (1960), a fictionalized account of how Ackerley acquired Queenie and learned to live with her; winner of the first W. H. Smith prize.
• My Father and Myself (1968), published posthumously. An autobiography of his own life as well as a biography of his father, and a study of both men's sexualities. Only after his father's death did Ackerley discover that his father had for years maintained a mistress and three daughters in Barnes. Ackerley also discovered that his father had had a number of gay relationships, including one with the wealthy Count de Gallatin.

He published one volume of poems Micheldever and Other Poems and was one of the poets included in Poems by Four Authors.

His play The Prisoners of War (1925) was well received in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ackerley was a close friend and literary admirer of E. M. Forster's. He considered Forster the greatest English novelist of his day and wrote a short biography E.M. Forster: A Portrait.

Ackerley also wrote the introduction to Escapers All; 'the Personal Narratives of Fifteen Escapers from War-Time Prison Camps 1914-1918'.

Both Ackerley's letters and diaries were published posthumously.

Ackerley willed his royalties to a fund to establish the annual J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.