Art and Reality

Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family and educated at Clifton. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris, before going up to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1909 to read law. On coming down he served as a Red Cross orderly in the Balkan War of 1912-13,the inspiration for Memoir of the Bobotes, before joining the Nigerian Political Service. Cary is probably best known as a novelist and especially for Mister Johnson and 'The First Tryptych' (Herself Surprised, To Be A Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth) in which the three main protagonists narrate their interlocking experiences and reveal their contrasting personalities. However he was also a fine short story writer, essayist and poet.