Woodcock was born in
Winnipeg,
Manitoba, but moved with his parents to
England at an early age, attending
Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow and
Morley College. Though his family was quite poor, Woodcock's grandfather offered to pay his tuition if he went to
Cambridge University which he turned down due to the condition that he undertake seminary training for the
Anglican clergy.[3] Instead, he took a job as a
clerk at the
Great Western Railway and it was there that he first became interested in anarchism. He was to remain an anarchist for the rest of his life, writing several books on the subject, including Anarchism, the anthology The Anarchist Reader (1977), and biographies of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
William Godwin,
Oscar Wilde and
Peter Kropotkin. It was during these years that he met several prominent literary figures, including
T. S. Eliot and
Aldous Huxley, and forging a particularly close relationship with the
art theoristHerbert Read.[4] Woodcock's first published work was The White Island, a collection of
poetry, which was issued by
Fortune Press in 1940.[5]
At
Camp Angel in
Oregon, a camp for
conscientious objectors, he was a founder of the
Untide Press, which sought to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format. Following the war, he returned to Canada, eventually settling in
Vancouver,
British Columbia. In 1955, he took a post in the English department of the
University of British Columbia, where he stayed until the 1970s. Around this time he started to write more prolifically, producing several travel books and collections of poetry, as well as the works on anarchism for which he is best known in collaboration with
Ivan Avakumović.
Towards the end of his life, Woodcock became increasingly interested in what he saw as the plight of
Tibetans. He traveled to
India, studied
Buddhism, became friends with the
Dalai Lama and established the Tibetan Refugee Aid Society. With Inge, his wife, Woodcock established Canada India Village Aid, which sponsors self-help projects in rural
India. Both organizations exemplify Woodcock's ideal of voluntary cooperation between peoples across national boundaries.
George and Inge also established a program to support professional Canadian writers. The Woodcock Fund, which began in 1989, provides financial assistance to writers in mid-book-project who face an unforeseen financial need that threatens the completion of their book. The Fund is available to writers of fiction, creative non-fiction, plays, and poetry. The Woodcocks helped create an endowment for the program in excess of two million dollars. The Woodcock Fund program is administered by the
Writers' Trust of Canada and by March 2012 had distributed $887,273 to 180 Canadian writers.[7]
George Woodcock died at his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on January 28, 1995.[8]
Orwell
Woodcock first came to know
George Orwell after they had a public disagreement in the pages of the Partisan Review. In his "
London Letter" published in the March–April 1942 issue of the review, Orwell had written that in the context of a war against fascism,
pacifism was "objectively
pro-fascist".[9] As the founder and editor of Now, an "anti-war paper" which Orwell had mentioned in his article as an example of publications that published contributions by both
pacifists and
fascists, Woodcock took exception to this.[9]: 257 Woodcock stated that "the review had abandoned its position as an independent forum", and was now "the cultural review of the British Anarchist movement".[9] Despite this difference, the two became good friends and kept up a correspondence until Orwell's death, and Now would publish Orwell's article "
How the Poor Die" in its November 6, 1946 issue.[10]
Woodcock later wrote The Crystal Spirit (1966), a critical study of Orwell and his work which won a
Governor General's Award.[11] The title is taken from the last line of the poem written by Orwell in memory of the Italian militiaman he met in Barcelona in December 1936 during the
Spanish Civil War, a meeting Orwell describes in the opening lines to Homage to Catalonia (1938).[12]
Recognition
Woodcock was honoured with several awards, including a Fellowship of the
Royal Society of Canada in 1968, the UBC Medal for Popular Biography in 1973 and 1976, and the
Molson Prize in 1973. In 1970, he received an honorary doctorate from
Sir George Williams University, which later became
Concordia University.[13] However, he only accepted awards given by his peers, refusing several awards given by the Canadian state, including the
Order of Canada. The one exception was the award of the Freedom of the City of Vancouver, which he accepted in 1994.[14]
He is the subject of a biography, The Gentle Anarchist: A Life of George Woodcock (1998) by
George Fetherling, and a documentary George Woodcock: Anarchist of Cherry Street by
Tom Shandel and
Alan Twigg.
^
abcOrwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 2: My Country Right or Left, pp. 210–212 (London, Penguin)
Evren, Süreyyya, and Ruth Kinna. "George Woodcock: The Ghost Writer of Anarchism 1." Anarchist Studies 23.1 (2015): 45–61.
Adams, Matthew S. "Memory, History, and Homesteading: George Woodcock, Herbert Read, and Intellectual Networks 1." Anarchist Studies 23.1 (2015): 86–104.