PEN International: Founding and Collaboration

PEN International originated in contacts among writers, not in a treaty between states. In summer 1921, Catherine Amy Dawson Scott planned a dining club to welcome local writers and visiting foreign authors. She wanted writers abroad to be able to find colleagues without relying solely on introductions through private acquaintances.

On October 5, more than forty people attended the inaugural dinner at the Florence Restaurant on Rupert Street, London. John Galsworthy accepted the presidency, Austin Harrison became honorary treasurer, and Dawson Scott's daughter Marjorie became honorary secretary. Under the name Marjorie Watts, she later published a history of PEN's early years, preserving her mother's letters and the founding circular.

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The founding circular set an annual subscription of five shillings for stationery, printing, and secretarial expenses; diners paid for their own meals. It proposed electing a committee by a show of hands and creating a separate international committee. It also specified membership qualifications, including publishing poetry or fiction, having plays performed, or editing periodicals. The fledgling organization already had entry requirements and a division of responsibilities; it was not simply an entirely open reading group.

These arrangements translated the ideal of friendship into practical work. The secretary collected dinner notifications and arranged meetings, the committee handled membership, and the treasurer managed shared expenses. Dinners could recur without a dedicated clubhouse, but international expansion still required writers elsewhere to undertake everyday organization.

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Belgium's experience shows that endorsement by famous figures and actually running an association were different matters. The Belgian poet and translator Émile Cammaerts, who lived in London, acted as an intermediary, introducing Paul Delair to the London founders. Louis Piérard in turn asked Brussels poet Raymond Limbosch to advance the practical preparations.

The Belgian writers' club adopted its statutes on October 1, 1922, setting a subscription of ten francs and admitting literary authors and university scholars of literature. It hoped to bring Dutch- and French-language writers together. In 1923, Belgian writers were invited to Paris, followed by invitations to French authors to visit Brussels. Cooperation depended on correspondence, hospitality, and local organizers rather than London directly administering every branch.

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The first international congress met in London from May 1 to 3, 1923. Discussions, dinners, and cultural visits gathered writers from different centers, but texts still had to circulate afterward. Centers elected their own committees, admitted members, and established local rules, while the shared network enabled visiting authors to be welcomed elsewhere.

That October, Galsworthy wrote to Frans Mijnssen, secretary of the Dutch center, asking him to arrange a Dutch translation of his “The International Thought” for publication in leading newspapers. The letter shows cooperation taking the concrete form of selecting a text, requesting translation, and seeking outlets. The request alone does not establish that it was published everywhere. Connections formed at congresses could thus extend into the press.

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Preparations for a Scottish center in 1927 arose from contacts between Galsworthy and Herbert Grierson, a professor at the University of Edinburgh. Grierson then approached Christopher Grieve, the writer known as Hugh MacDiarmid, connecting existing literary networks to PEN. The center coexisted with London's, showing that organizational boundaries also involved regional cultures and languages.

The Scottish constitution allocated six management-committee seats each to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with additional representation for Gaelic, Inverness, Aberdeen, and Dundee. This arrangement sought to prevent one city from dominating. Yet Helen Cruickshank's recollections, cited in the research, indicate that the Gaelic section was not active in practice. Constitutional representation and the capacity to sustain activity still need to be examined separately.

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International gatherings did not automatically erase wartime hostility. In 1923, French and Belgian representatives opposed the participation in the London congress of Gerhart Hauptmann, who had signed the German intellectuals' war manifesto of 1914. Romain Rolland, in turn, opposed this exclusion. Who could represent a literature thus became a practical organizational problem.

When the Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno was exiled in 1924, the French and Belgian centers called for a joint protest, but Galsworthy considered this beyond the group's core work. Early PEN members did not share a uniform understanding of remaining “nonpolitical.” Defending writers' freedom of expression later became a major undertaking, but a unified position and mature assistance mechanisms cannot be projected backward onto 1921.

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Principles adopted at the 1927 congress called for literary exchange across borders, respect for works of art even during war, and the use of writers' influence to foster mutual understanding. These resolutions gradually turned abstract friendship into shared commitments. They belonged to a later stage of institution-building and must not be confused with the original dining circular as though they were one constitution.

Rachel Potter interprets this development as writers collectively shaping a literary public sphere: existing publishing, linguistic, and personal connections were increasingly put to work for collective action. By the 1930s, PEN was intervening more explicitly in questions of freedom of expression for imprisoned and exiled writers. Looking back at its formation, its organizational capacity grew from the independent work of local centers and was repeatedly tested by disputes over membership, cultural differences, and political responsibility.

References: [2] [5]