Paul Hugh Howard Potts (19 July 1911 – 26 August 1990), a British-born poet who lived in British Columbia in his youth,Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960Potts is often called a Canadian, for example by Ronald Caplan in George Orwell's Friend which has him "born in British Columbia", but other sources - including the Times obituary - give his birthplace as Datchet in the UK. was the author of Dante Called You Beatrice (1960), a memoir of unrequited love. One of the women treated in the memoir was Jean Hore, who married the writer Philip O'Connor but ended up confined as a schizophrenic for over fifty years until her death.Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960Quentin and Philip: A Double Portrait, Andrew Barrow, Pan Books

Family Potts was born in Datchet, BerkshireDatchet was at that time in Buckinghamshire to (Arthur George) Howard Potts (1869-1918), who had emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he was a partner in a bakery and confectionery business,British Columbia Gazette, 1909, pg 3070 and his Irish wife Julia Helen Kavanagh (also recorded as Cavanagh).Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960 Arthur Potts's father, Dr Walter Jeffery Potts (1837-1898),Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 1850-1950, J. F. Bosher, 2010, pg 134 had married Julia, daughter of Sir Thomas Branthwaite Beevor, 3rd Baronet;A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, Sir Bernard Burke, 31st Edition, volume 1, 1869, pg 88 many descendants with the name 'Beevor-Potts' live in Canada.Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 1850-1950, J. F. Bosher, 2010, pg 135Dante Called You Beatrice, Paul Potts, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960, pg 28The Tormented Prince, J. Leigh Hirst, Brimstone Press, 2012, pg 1

Education He was educated in Canada, England (at Stonyhurst until the age of sixteenDante Called You Beatrice, Paul Potts, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960, pg 25) and Italy (at a Jesuit college in Florence),The Visva-bharati Quarterly, volume 31, issue 2, 1965, pg 131 but from the early 1930s he lived in London. He frequented the Soho-Fitzrovia area where he would sell broadsheet copies of his poetry in the streets and pubs."Paul Potts - Obituary", The Times, London, 29 August 1990Peter Stothard, "Soho, ring-marked and a little soiled", TLS blog, 2 March 2008, retrieved 7 February 2013

Literary career Among Potts's literary friends were George Orwell and the English poet George Barker.Taylor, D. J., Orwell: The Life, Henry Holt and Company, 2003, passimMeyers, Jeffrey (ed.), Introduction to George Orwell, Routledge, 1975, p.20Crick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life, Penguin, 1982, passim Potts's memoir of Orwell, "Don Quixote on a Bicycle", appeared in The London Magazine in 1957Rodden, John, George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation, Oxford University Press, 1989, rev. 2002, pp 128-129Rodden, John, The Unexamined Orwell, University of Texas Press, 2011, p.222 and became a chapter of Dante Called You Beatrice. His 1948 essay “The World of George Barker” appeared in Poetry Quarterly.Warren, Richard, "Paul Potts on ‘The World of George Barker’", nd, blog post; retrieved 12 February 2013

Later life In late middle-age, Potts was '...balding' with 'a stutter that he mixed with rapid blinking and an amused chuckle as he started a sentence', eventually becoming a dissolute figure 'barred from Soho pubs'.The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, Christopher Barker, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pg 181

Accidental death Potts died in 1990 of smoke inhalation from a fire in his bedroom; he had been house-bound for some years.The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, Christopher Barker, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pg 181

Bibliography (1940) A Poet's Testament, with drawings by Cliff Bayliss and Scott MacGregor, foreword by Hugh MacDiarmid (1944) Instead of a Sonnet (enlarged 1978) (1960) Dante Called You Beatrice (1970) To Keep A Promise (1973) Invitation to a Sacrament (2006) Ronald Caplan (ed.), George Orwell's Friend: Selected Writings by Paul Potts

See also Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (1969) Faber Book of Twentieth Century Verse (1953) New Lyrical Ballads (1945)

Notes and references

Further reading Latona, Robert, "Happily Never After, or, The Rubbish Tower", New Partisan. "Guide to the Paul Potts Papers", Northwestern University Library, Evanston, IL