David Lindsay
David Lindsay (3 March 1876 – 16 July 1945)[1] was a British author now best remembered for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family in London, and was brough
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David Lindsay (3 March 1876 – 16 July 1945)[1] was a British author now best remembered for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family in London, and was brought up partly in Jedburgh, where he had family background. He was educated at Colfe's School, Lewisham,[2] and won a scholarship to university, but for financial reasons went into business, becoming an insurance clerk at Lloyd's of London.[3] He was successful, but his career was interrupted by service in World War I, at the age of 40. He first joined the Grenadier Guards, then the Royal Army Pay Corps, where he was promoted to Corporal.
After the war Lindsay moved to Porth near Newquay in Cornwall with his young wife to become a full-time writer, living there from 1919 to 1929.[4] A Voyage to Arcturus was published in 1920, but it was not a success, selling fewer than six hundred copies. This work has links with Scottish fantasists (for example, George MacDonald, whose work Lindsay was familiar with),[3] and it was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.[5] Also, J. R. R. Tolkien said he read the book "with avidity", and characterised it as a work of philosophy, religion, and morality
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