Christopher Caudwell

Christopher Caudwell was the pseudonym of Christopher St John Sprigg (20 October 1907 – 13 February 1937), a British Marxist writer, literary critic, intellectual and activist. Life He was born into a Roman Catholic family in London, England. He was educated at the Benedictine Ealing Priory School, but left school at the age of 15 and worked first as a cub reporter at the Yorkshire Observer, where his father was literary editor, and then as editor of British Malaya. Two years later his founded an aeronautical publishing company with his brother. He also published on automobiles and he designed a infinitely variable gear. He continued scientific studies and published The Crisis of Physics in 1936. According to Marxist historian Helena Sheehan, Caudwell became interested in Marxism in 1934 and began to study it with "extraordinary intensity". In the summer of 1935, he wrote his first Marxist book entitled Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry which was published by Macmillan. Following the completion of his book he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.