Works of and on Rudolph Friedmann

Rudolph Friedmann was a bookseller and writer. His writing is consistently experimental in form. He typically combines essay and fictional narrative. The one overwhelming influence on his writing was Sigmund Freud; though as is evident from the following, existentialism, especially Kirkegaard, is also important for him. Gershon Legman, in No Laughing Matter, describes his work as ‘poetic or “aphoristic” analysis.’

Very little has been written about him. He appears in the background of a few works of literary history and biography: see section 2. Read those to see why I am fascinated by him.

Updated 11 February 2026.

1. By Rudolph Friedmann

i. ‘Kierkegaard: The Analysis of the Psychological Personality,’ Horizon, vol. 8, no. 46 (October 1943), pp. 525–73.

ii. ‘The World of the Father,’ Horizon, vol. 12, no. 70 (October 1945), pp. 269–78.

iii. ‘The End of Feeling,’ New Road: Directions in European Art and Letters, no. 4, ed. Fred Marnau (London: Grey Walls Press, 1946), pp. 127–43.

iv. ‘The End of Feeling,’ Neurotica, no. 1 (Spring 1948), pp. 4–23. — Expanded version of iii.

v. ‘The Attack upon Prostitution as an Attack upon Culture,’ Neurotica, no. 2 (Summer 1948), pp. 18–27.

vi. Kierkegaard: The Analysis of the Psychological Personality (London: Peter Nevill, 1949); American ed., Kierkegaard (New York, NY: New Directions, 1949). — Expanded version of i. — Reviews: D. S. White, English, vol. 7, no. 42 (Autumn 1949), p. 295; NKB, New York Times (19 March 1950), p. BR11; Michael Hamburger, World Review, no. 14 (April 1950); American-Scandinavian Review, vol. 38, no. 2 (June 1950), p. 194; Psychiatric Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1951), p. 524.

vii. ‘Struwwelpeter,’ Neurotica, no. 9 (Winter 1952), pp. 25–32. — Reprinted: New Directions in Poetry and Prose, vol. 14 (1953), pp. 164–9; Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm, ed. Dwight MacDonald (New York, NY: Random House, 1960), pp. 493–501.

viii. ‘Autumn Relationships’ [as Incitatus], Springtime Two: An Anthology of Current Trends in Literature, ed. Peter and Wendy Owen (London: Peter Owen, 1958), pp. 21–8.

 

2. About Rudolph Friedmann

Charles Wrey Gardiner, The Dark Thorn (London: Grey Walls, 1946).

Muriel Spark, The Comforters (London: Macmillan, 1957). — Here Friedmann is caricatured as ‘Baron Stock.’

Derek Stanford, Inside the Forties: Literary Memoirs, 1937–57 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1977).

Nigel Vaux Halliday, More than a Bookshop: Zwemmer’s and Art in the Twentieth Century (London: Philip Wilson, 1991).

Peter Owen and James Nye, Not a Nice Jewish Boy: Memoirs of a Maverick Publisher (Oxford: Fonthill, 2021).