The Journalism of Anthony Burgess:

Burgess wrote thousands of articles for dozens of periodicals and his journalistic writing is a hugely important part of his creative life.

As well as being a prolific novelist, Anthony Burgess had a ceaseless energy for writing journalism. Because of a faulty diagnosis of a fatal brain tumour in 1959, Burgess was determined to make a living from writing, and it was clear that being a novelist alone was not the way to do this. Writing in 1984, he says, ‘the rewards of the serious novelist are meagre, and he needs journalism to augment his insufficient earnings from art’.

Yet even though Burgess sometimes thought about his journalistic output in this way, the quality of the work he produced shows that money was not his only consideration. Ever the professional, his writing in reviews and think-pieces remained of a high quality, saturated with the typical wit and invention that are familiar hallmarks of his novels. Moreover, it is primarily through his journalism that the public figure of Burgess is revealed, and it is the voice he perfected in these pieces which facilitated his appearances on television and radio.

You can read Burgess’s essay on the art of journalism on our website HERE.

Our growing archive of Anthony Burgess’s own journalism can be accessed here.

Carcanet have published a selection of Burgess’s literary essays in a volume titled The Ink Trade. Alongside favourable stern appraisals of contemporary writers, the book includes some pieces not previously collected or published in English. along with some unpublished work, such as ‘Joyce as Novelist’, a lengthy essay on his hero James Joyce, and ‘A Movie That Changed My Life’, on his love for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It is a fascinating collection which provides a selection of Burgess’s most rewarding non-fiction writing. Click here for details of the book.

We hope that you will enter our annual writing competition with a prize fund of £4000. Click here for full details.

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