E. S. P. Haynes

Edmund Sidney Pollock Haynes (26 September 1877 – 5 January 1949), best known as E. S. P. Haynes was a British lawyer and writer.

Edmund Sidney Pollock Haynes
Born26 September 1877
Died5 January 1949
OccupationLawyer, writer

Biography

The son of a London solicitor, Haynes was a King's Scholar at Eton College and a winner of a Brackenbury Scholarship at Balliol College. John Moore later said that Haynes at Oxford was "witty, polished, [and] brilliant".[1] Haynes formed a close friendship with Edward Thomas, who recorded in his diary (22 February 1899): "I like Haynes & yet detest the brilliant, vicious society at Balliol. Haynes himself is utterly immoral; but still with many fine feelings & purposes, I think..."[2]

Haynes practised as a lawyer in the same offices at 9 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, where his father had practised. A prolific author, he was a well-known figure in London's literary circles from 1900 to his death in 1949. His daughter was novelist Renée Haynes.[3]

Hilaire Belloc's 1912 work The Servile State is dedicated to Haynes.[4] In The Decline of Liberty in England (1916), Haynes lamented the growth of a "vast and irresponsible bureaucracy" and the decline in respect for personal rights by the state, the press and public opinion. He said that the state should run social services but rejected the way in which "from modern Berlin Mr Lloyd George and his friends have imported their experiments in establishing the Servile State".[4] He also advocated the decriminalisation of homosexuality.[5] He ended the book with a dystopian view of England's collectivist future.[4] The English Review said in its review: "Mr. Haynes is a rational anarchist, or shall we say an anarchistic rationalist? It is not a bad configuration, and when he lets fly he is good reading, pleasingly fermentative, ardently cynical, almost religiously personal. He dislikes virginity, he disdains fidelity. Altogether a stimulant, for Mr. Haynes is a palpable man".[5]

Skepticism

Haynes was an atheist.[6] He was also a rationalist, his book The Belief in Personal Immortality (1913) was skeptical of the claims of psychical research and life after death.[7]

Publications

References
  1. John Moore, The Life and Letters of Edward Thomas (London: William Heinemann, 1939), p. 42.
  2. Lucy Newlyn, 'Introduction', Edward Thomas, Oxford (Oxford: Signal Books, 2005), p. xxvii.
  3. Bogen, Anna. (2016). Women's University Fiction, 1880–1945. Routledge. p. 28.
  4. W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 95.
  5. 'Books', The English Review, ed. Austin Harrison (September 1916), p. 287.
  6. Clark, Ronald William. (1968). The Huxleys. McGraw-Hill. p. 244
  7. McCabe, Joseph. (1950). A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science. Watts. p. 311

Further reading
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