David Jones (1895–1974) has been referred to as “the lost modernist,” primarily by his biographer, Thomas Dilworth, and also by prominent reviewers of Dilworth’s work, like David Bentley Hart. Though a stunning visual artist, a master engraver, and an arresting poet, he has long remained in the shadowy back rooms of twentieth-century scholarship. We might recognize the name of the English artist of Welsh heritage, but few have actually read his book-length World War I poem, In Parenthesis, or seen any of his Welsh landscape watercolors, or his engravings for Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Happily, though, if the two books I discuss here are any indication, he will not be lost for much longer.
Both Thomas Dilworth’s 2017 biography, David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, and Jamie Callison et al.’s edited collection, David Jones: A Christian Modernist? (2018) draw out the intricacies of Jones’s unique position as...
