John Ferrar Holms

Who is John Ferrar Holms?

John Ferrar Holms was a British literary critic born in India to a British civil servant and an Irish mother. Holms was educated in English boarding schools, and he published literary criticism in the Calendar of Modern Letters between 1925 and 1927 and one short story titled "A Death." He was associated with Djuna Barnes, Edwin Muir, Emily Coleman, Antonia White, and Peggy Guggenheim. Djuna Barnes dedicated her novel Nightwood to John Ferrar Holms and Peggy Guggenheim. Holms was Peggy Guggenheim's lover from 1928 to his sudden death in 1934. His time spent at the 14th-Century manor Hayford Hall in Devon, England, in 1932 and 1933 with Djuna Barnes and Emily Coleman had a profound effect on Djuna Barnes and Nightwood.