Hunter Rex (or Reginald) (1889-1960)


Rex Hunter, who was born in New Zealand, was a poet, playwright and journalist who wrote among other books Porlock: a Portrait, (introduction by JCP) and Call Out of Darkness, a book of poetry. (Lloyd Emerson Siberell was instrumental in placing the first one with the Caxton Press in 1940, and published the second one in 1964 under his own imprint of The Auburncrest Library.) Hunter came to the United States, and at some point was John Cowper's neighbour at Patchin Place in New York. Both John Cowper and Phyllis liked him. He was also Gamel Woolsey's first husband (and probably the model for Alan Douglas, the male character in her novel One Way of Love). They separated in 1927, but never divorced. He went back to New Zealand in 1949. JCP mentions him in Autobiography:
It was not till after the War that I met my friend Reginald Hunter who succeeded me in my "top-floor front" in Patchin Place. Mr Hunter, who as a matter of fact comes from New Zealand, is one of those Englishmen who always make me feel proud of my fellow-countrymen. Tall, lean, and so delicately fragile as to look sometimes almost transparent, Rex Hunter is one of those rare beings who, in the profoundest psychological sense, chooses once for all "the better path" and never thereafter — no! not for any worldly temptation — turns aside from it.