Lazarus Leonard Aaronson (24 December 1894 – 9 December 1966), often referred to as L. Aaronson, was a British poet and a lecturer in economics. As a young man, he belonged to a group of Jewish friends who are today known as the Whitechapel Boys, many of whom later achieved fame as writers and artists. Though less radical in his use of language, he has been compared to his more renowned Whitechapel friend, Isaac Rosenberg, in terms of diction and verbal energy. Aaronson's poetry is characterised more as 'post-Georgian' than modernistic, and reviewers have since been able to trace influences back to both the English poet John Keats, and Hebrew poets such as Shaul Tchernichovsky and Zalman Shneur.
Aaronson lived most of his life in London and spent much of his working life as a lecturer in economics at the City of London College. In his twenties, he converted to Christianity and a large part of his poetry focused on his conversion and spiritual identity as a Jew and an Englishman. In total, he published three collections of poetry: Christ in the Synagogue (1930), Poems (1933), and The Homeward Journey and Other Poems (1946). Although he did not achieve widespread recognition, Aaronson gained a cult following of dedicated readers. Upon retiring from teaching, he moved to Harpenden, Hertfordshire, where he died from heart failure and coronary heart disease on 9 December 1966. His poetry was not widely publicised, and he left many unpublished poems at his death.
Life and career
Aaronson was born on 24 December 1894 at 34 Great Pearl Street, Spitalfields in the East End of London to poor Orthodox Jewish parents who had immigrated from Vilna in the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. His father was Louis Aaronson, a bootmaker, and his mother was Sarah Aaronson, née Kowalski. He attended Whitechapel City Boys' School and later received a scholarship to attend Hackney Downs Grammar School.
His father emigrated to New York in 1905. The rest of the family followed in 1912, except for 17-year old Lazarus who remained in London. From then on, he lived with the family of Joseph Posener at 292 Commercial Road in the East End of London. At the time, the area was a hub of the Jewish diaspora and at the turn of the 20th century, a quarter of its population were Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Growing up in the East End, Aaronson was part of a group of friends who are today referred to as the Whitechapel Boys, all of whom were children of Jewish immigrants and shared literary and artistic ambitions. Others in the group who, like Aaronson, later achieved distinction included John Rodker, Isaac Rosenberg, Joseph Leftwich, Stephen Winsten, Clara Birnberg, David Bomberg, and the brothers Abraham Fineberg and Joseph Fineberg. Aaronson was also involved in the Young Socialist League, where he and other Whitechapel Boys helped organise educational meetings on modern art and radical politics. Aaronson remained a committed socialist throughout adulthood.
Having been diagnosed with tuberculosis and diabetes, Aaronson did not serve in the military during the First World War. Between 1913 and 1915, and again between 1926 and 1928, he studied economics with a special focus on public administration at the London School of Economics, but never completed his degree.
Aaronson was married three times. His first wife was the actress Lydia Sherwood (1906–1989), whom he was married to between 1924 and 1931. He filed for divorce on grounds of her adultery with the theatre producer Theodore Komisarjevsky, and the much publicised suit was undefended. His second marriage, which took place on 9 July 1938, to Dorothy Beatrice Lewer (1915–2005), also ended in divorce. On 14 January 1950, Aaronson married Margaret Olive Ireson (1920–1981), with whom he had one son, David, who was born in 1953.
To friends and family, Lazarus Aaronson was known as Laz. He was friends with the novelist Stephen Hudson, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, the media mogul Sidney Bernstein, the artists Mark Gertler and Matthew Smith and the poets Harold Monro, Louis MacNeice and Samuel Beckett. Aaronson was also close to the economist Graham Hutton, who in 1952 made a radio programme about him for the BBC.