  george reavey (1 may 1907 â 11 august 1976) was a russian-born irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. he was also samuel beckett's first literary agent. in addition to his own poetry, reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century russian poetry to an english-speaking audience. he was also the first publisher to bring out a collection of english translations of the french surrealist poet paul Ãluard. perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of reavey's literary career was his claim, made to the new york press and to british editor and publisher, alan clodd, that he had written the painted bird for jerzy kosiÅski.cited in d. g. myersâ review of jerzy kosinski: a biography ==early life and work== reavey's father, daniel reavey, was a flax engineer from belfast and his mother, sophia turchenko, was russian. he was born in vitebsk and the family moved to nizhni novgorod in 1909, where the young poet was educated and became a fluent russian speaker. when daniel was arrested in 1919, during the russian civil war, mother and son fled to belfast. reavey attended the royal belfast academical institution until 1921, at which point the family moved to fulham, london. here he attended the sloan school. he spent the summer holidays in belfast, where he recorded folk ballads and gaelic poetry in a series of notebooks. in 1926, he entered gonville and caius college, cambridge, where he studied history and literature. the became associated with the group of cambridge writers associated with the magazine experiment, including william empson, jacob bronowski, charles madge, kathleen raine and julian trevelyan. he contributed prose and poetry to experiment along with translations from boris pasternak. ==the paris years== in 1929, reavey moved to paris with his friend trevelyan. ostensibly, this was so that he could improve his french for the entry examinations for the indian civil service, but in fact he was in search of an entry into the avant garde artistic circles based in that city. he met thomas macgreevy, who introduced him to beckett, james joyce, brian coffey and denis devlin and to many of the writers who published in transition. he also became a regular contributor to samuel putnam's the new review. putnam published reavey's first book, faust's metamorphoses in 1932, a series of twenty vers libre monologues based on christopher marlowe's faust with illustrations by s. w. hayter who worked with trevelyan at atelier 17. around this time, reavey started his literary agency the bureau littÃ©raire europÃ©en (later the european literary bureau) and his [[euro
1907_births 1976_deaths 20th-century_poets Irish_modernist_poets Irish_people_of_Russian_descent Irish_poets Surrealist_poets