Donald Carroll was an American author, editor, poet, columnist

Columnist

A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....

 and humourist.

Early life

Born in Dallas, Texas in 1940, he was educated at the University of Texas, where he founded the poetry quarterly Quagga - which published the work of Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur

Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....

, e.e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

 and Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, among others - and at Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

, where he founded The Dubliner, a literary magazine, and edited the anthology, New Poets of Ireland. While at Trinity his own poems were widely published and earned an invitation from T.S. Eliot to visit him in London.

Editor and Publisher

Carroll moved to London in 1964 and after a brief spell as a literary agent

Literary agent

A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...

, during which he met Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...

 and worked closely with him in producing The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant is the title of two biographical works, both based on the life of Quentin Crisp:*The Naked Civil Servant is Crisp's 1968 autobiographical book...

, he set up his own publishing house in 1966. The firm’s first two books, The Liverpool Scene, which introduced the 'Liverpool poets

Liverpool poets

The Liverpool Poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. They were involved in the 1960s Liverpool scene that gave rise to The Beatles, during a time when the city was termed by US beat poet Allen Ginsberg "the centre of the consciousness...

', and The Wife of Martin Guerre

The Wife of Martin Guerre

The Wife of Martin Guerre is a short novel by an American writer Janet Lewis. The novel speculates how the life of Bertrande, Martin Guerre’s wife, copes with exceptional circumstances in 16th century France.-Plot summary:...

, made an immediate impact. By the end of the company’s first year, its list of authors included Robert Bly

Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

, Brigid Brophy

Brigid Brophy

Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey was an English writer. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists since 1960, S. J...

, Dick Clement and Ian LaFrenais, James Dickey

James Dickey

James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1966.-Early years:...

, Adrian Henri

Adrian Henri

Adrian Henri was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group The Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology The Mersey Sound, along with Brian Patten and Roger McGough. The trio of Liverpool poets came to prominence in that city's...

, Michael Levey

Michael Levey

Sir Michael Vincent Levey, LVO was a British art historian and was director of the National Gallery for thirteen years, from 1973 to 1986.-Biography:...

, Edward Lucie-Smith

Edward Lucie-Smith

John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith is a British writer, poet, art critic, curator, broadcaster and author of exhibition catalogues.-Biography:Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, moving to the United Kingdom in 1946...

, Roger McGough

Roger McGough

Roger Joseph McGough CBE is a well-known English performance poet. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please and records voice-overs for commercials, as well as performing his own poetry regularly...

, Charles Osborne

Charles Osborne

Charles Osborne hiccupped continuously for 68 years .Osborne was from Anthon, Iowa, U.S., and he was entered in Guinness World Records as the man with the Longest Attack of Hiccups. The hiccups started in 1923 and persisted for a total of 68 years...

, Brian Patten

Brian Patten

-Background:Born near Liverpool's docks, he attended Sefton Park School in the Smithdown Road area of Liverpool, where he was noted for his essays and greatly encouraged in his work by Harry Sutcliffe his form teacher. He left school at fifteen and began work for The Bootle Times writing a column...

 and Ralph Steadman

Ralph Steadman

Ralph Steadman is a British cartoonist and caricaturist who is perhaps best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson.-Personal life:Steadman was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Towyn, North Wales...

. The London Evening Standard declared Carroll to be, at 26, ‘one of the British publishing world’s most important and successful figures.’

Columnist and Humourist

After a disagreement over editorial policy with his firm’s German backer, he left publishing in 1968 to become a columnist, producing four national newspaper and magazine columns in addition to his own newsletter, The Fifth Column. In 1972 he returned to the US, living first in Los Angeles and then in New York, where he continued his columns for the London Evening News and Books and Bookmen. Over the next few years he also conducted a series of highly-acclaimed interviews (with Prime Minister Harold Wilson

Harold Wilson

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...

, Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...

, Malcolm Muggeridge

Malcolm Muggeridge

Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...

, Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

 et al.) for the Xerox Education Group which were collected in a book, The Donald Carroll Interviews. In addition he wrote several humorous books, including Doing It with Style, in which he revived his collaboration with Quentin Crisp.

Recent years

In 1984 he returned briefly to England, before moving to Greece and then settling in Turkey, where he built a house at the tip of the Bodrum peninsula. Here he wrote the first of his travel books, the award-winning Insider's Guide to Turkey, as well as numerous articles for publications in England and America. It was also here that he became fascinated with the excavations at Ephesus

Ephesus

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...

, an interest that led eventually to his book Mary’s House, which established his reputation as the world’s leading expert on the history and discovery of the House of the Virgin Mary at Ephesus.

Selected bibliography

• New Poets of Ireland (1963) Editor
• Art of the Romantic Era by Marcel Brion
  Marcel Brion
  Marcel Brion was a French essayist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. -Biography:The son of a lawyer, Brion was classmates in Thiers with Marcel Pagnol and Albert Cohen. After completing his secondary education in Champittet, Switzerland, he studied law at the University of Aix-en-Provence...
  
  (1966) Translator
• The Donald Carroll Interviews (1973) ISBN 0-900735-15-5
• Four’s Company (1973) interviews; ISBN 0-900735-17-1
• Movements in Modern Art (1973) with Edward Lucie-Smith ISBN 0-8180-0122-4
• Dear Sir, Drop Dead!: Hate mail through the ages (1979) Editor ISBN 0-02-040360-7
• Why Didn’t I Say That?: The art of verbal self-defence (1980) ISBN 0-531-09923-7
• Doing It with Style (1981) with Quentin Crisp ISBN 0-531-09852-4
• The Best Excuse (1983) ISBN 0-698-11219-9
• The Insider’s Guide to Turkey (1990) ISBN 0-86190-283-1
• The Insider’s Guide to Florida (1991) ISBN 0-962-7031-60-7
• The Insider’s Guide to Eastern Canada (1993) ISBN 0-86190-395-1
• The Insider’s Guide to Western Canada (1994) ISBN 0-86190-396-X
• Resident Alien: The New York diaries of Quentin Crisp (1996) Editor ISBN 0-00-225649-9
• Mary’s House: The extraordinary story behind the discovery of the house where the Virgin Mary lived and died (2000) ISBN 0-9538188-0-2
• Surprised by France (2005) ISBN 1-901130-44-4