The Evening Colonnade

The Evening Colonnade, published in 1973, is a collection of essays and reviews by the English writer and critic Cyril Connolly.

First edition
(publ. David Bruce & Watson)

The compilation consists primarily of Connolly's articles written when he was literary critic for The Sunday Times. Other articles are taken from Harpers & Queen, the London Magazine, Art News, Art and Literature and The New York Times.

The work is divided into four sections as follows:

• "Dew on the Garlic Leaf" contains mainly essays of personal experience, starting with a continuation of the autobiographical element of Enemies of Promise
• "Divers of Worship" comprises mainly reviews of works associated with past writers
• "Nothing if not Critical" includes reviews of contemporary writers of the modern movement
• "The House of Two Doors" consists of articles about topics other than writers

Connolly derived the title from Pope's poem on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:

"What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade

The morning bower, the ev'ning colonnade

But soft recesses of uneasy minds

To sigh unheard in, to the passing winds?"

He also had in mind the surrealist work of Chirico.