Alfred Richard Orage[a] (22 January 1873 – 6 November 1934) was a British influential figure in socialist politics and modernist culture, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age before the First World War.
In 1900, he met Holbrook Jackson and three years later they co-founded the Leeds Arts Club, which became a centre of modernist culture in Britain.
After marrying Sarah, "a fatherless girl, living with her mother", William Orage had "fecklessly drank" and gambled away his inheritance, a "little farm in Cambridgeshire" near his home village of Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire.
They were "decently, grindingly poor"; Sarah took in laundry to make ends meet and Alfred had to work as a farm labourer from the age of ten.
[7][8] Alfred excelled in his studies, and was sent to Culham training college in Oxfordshire where he also taught himself editorial skills and obtained a teaching post in Leeds, returning to Yorkshire in autumn 1893.
He brought a philosophical outlook to the paper, including in particular the thought of Plato and the theosophist Edward Carpenter, who was Orage's mentor for a time.
He set up a philosophical discussion circle called the Plato Group, including the architect Thomas Butler Wilson who was a friend of Alfred's future wife, Jean.
[11] The couple frequented the Northern Federation headquarters in Harrogate where Orage first met Annie Besant and other leading theosophists and began to lecture on mysticism, occultism, and idealism in Manchester and Leeds as well as publishing material in the Theosophical Review.
[12] Jean was an excellent needlewoman and sharp debater; she finally left Alfred to pursue her textile career in Haslemere and later working on the looms for William Morris's firm in Oxford Street, London.
During this period, Orage returned to socialist platforms, but by 1906, he was determined to combine Carpenter's socialism with Nietzsche's thought and theosophy.
[15] Orage appears to have had a magnetic effect on many women who frequented his lectures; both Mary Gawthorpe and Millie Price have left accounts of their sexual relationships with him.
In London, Orage attempted to form a league for the restoration of the guild system, in the spirit of the decentralised socialism of William Morris.
The failure of this project spurred him to buy the weekly magazine The New Age in 1907, in partnership with Holbrook Jackson and with the support of Shaw.
[citation needed] Orage transformed the magazine to fit with his conception of a forum for politics, literature, and the arts.
[19] Orage declared himself a socialist and followed Georges Sorel in arguing that trade unions should pursue an increasingly aggressive policy on wage deals and working conditions.
He approved of the increasing militancy of the unions in the era before the First World War and seems to have shared Sorel's belief in the necessity of a union-led general strike leading to a revolutionary situation.
[clarification needed] Members were allowed to continue their studies with Gurdjieff himself, after taking an oath not to communicate with Orage.
In Harlem, Jean Toomer, one of Orage's students at Greenwich Village, used Gurdjieff's work to confront the problem of racism.
The next day, while they were staying at the Irving Hotel, Orage wrote a letter to Gurdjieff unveiling a plan for the publication of All and Everything before the end of the year and promising a substantial amount of money.
Dylan Thomas's first published poem, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion", appeared in its issue dated 18 May 1933, but by then, the magazine was not selling well and Orage was experiencing financial difficulties.
[clarification needed] While he was broadcasting a speech as part of the BBC series, "Poverty in Plenty", once again expounding the doctrine of social credit, he experienced excruciating pain, but he continued as if nothing was happening.
After leaving the studio he spent the evening with his wife and friends and made plans to see the doctor next day, but he died in his sleep that night.