In those periodic literary revisions that retrieve “forgotten” novelists, some very deserving writers have been re-established. We owe the present popularity of Barbara Pym to such a rediscovery, and we can thank presses like Dial for reissuing the works of other neglected writers who are not historical curiosities but admirable novelists in their own right. With all this revisionist activity, then, it is surprising that no attention has been paid to Gabriel Fielding.
“Gabriel Fielding” is the pseudonym of Alan Gabriel Barnsley, who was born in Northumberland, England in 1916. He studied medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, but failed to qualify there and completed his studies at St. George’s Hospital in London. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, he had a general practice for some years and worked part time in the prison medical service. He came to America in 1966 as an author-in-residence at Washington State University, where he remains a professor of English.
Fielding has published three volumes of poetry, a collection of stories, and seven novels. Of the latter, the most celebrated is The Birthday King (1963), set in Nazi Germany, which won the W. H. Smith Prize and the St. Thomas More Society gold medal. It seems to me, however, that his reputation should rest on three novels that share the same central character and point of view: if one were to defer to current notions of literary packaging, one might call them the John Blaydon Trilogy.
