Terence Ian Fitton Armstrong "John Gawsworth"

Terence Ian Fitton Armstrong who was most commonly known under the pen name of John Gawsworth was born on June 29, 1912. He has 17 major poems or anthologies of poems, and 2 major short stories underneath his pen name. some of his more important writings were his first published Confession, 1931 and his last collection which was kind of a best of John Gawsworth, Collected Poems of John Gawsworth, 1948. He was born in the Baron’s Court district of London, a small and recently built district when he was born. His parents, Frederick Percy Armstrong and Ethel Jackson Armstrong divorced while Terence was very young. After the divorce, Terence seemed to have some resentment of his dad and was troubled by it as he was growing up. Sometime after his parents divorced his mom decided to go to Canada and married her former husband’s brother, Leaving Terence behind in London to live in a garret, which is the top floor in a house, normally a room in the attic of a house or apartment. He also started to work around town in a couple of the bookstores. After working in the bookstores awhile he eventually met and took after Arthur Machen, who was a reader for a local publisher, Ernest Benn. About this time he began to write free verse underneath his pen name of John Gawsworth. In 1933, he married Barbara Kentish who was the social editor of the British newspaper The Daily Mail. With his wife working at a newspaper Terence decided to start compiling horror and mystery short stories and anthologies to put into the newspaper, which created an increase in sales for the newspaper. Terence was very well known for his works, and the detail that he went into with them made him a very popular writer. Often he wrote collaborations of stories that he would piece together from various friends that he would piece all together into one story. in 1941 he enlisted into the RAF underneath his real name of Armstrong after a eries of failed medical tests kept him out of the army. By the later part of his career the stressful life of a writer began to catch up to him, leading him into alcoholism and fits of drunken rage, to the point of which he chucked his typewriter out of the window in one instance. Along with his drunkenness he was dealing with the psychological stress that the divorce of his parents had put on him when he was a very young child, which led him to feed his ego and put himself out there as a more interesting man than he really was. After the type writer incident Terence kept writing poems, but instead choosing to hand write them and keep them in small hand journals. As he started to age he developed diabetes and began to fall ill. He kept writing from the different hospitals he was a patient at. Finally at the age of 58 he received a very large and substantial amount of inheritance, enough money to cure him of his ailments, and allow him to retire. Unfortunately he passed away from a pulmonary embolism two days before he received notification of the inheritance.

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