Cary, (Arthur) Joyce (Lunel) (1888–1957), author, was born 7 December 1888 at the home of his maternal grandparents in Derry, elder of two sons of Arthur Pitt Chambers Cary (d. 1937), engineer, of 41 Kitto Rd, London, and Charlotte Louisa Cary (d. 1898), daughter of James Joyce, manager of the Belfast Bank, Derry. Cary's ancestors had been landlords of large sections of the Inishowen peninsula. In 1900 his father married Dora Stevenson and the family moved to Chiswick, west London. He was educated at Hurstleigh preparatory school, Tunbridge Wells (1900–03) and Clifton College (1903–6). An inheritance of £300 a year from his grandmother, Helen Joyce, helped Cary study art at the Edinburgh College of Art and in Paris (1907–9). 1908 saw his first published work, Verse, which he later described as ‘real trash’. He studied law at Trinity College, Oxford (1909–12), graduating with a disappointing fourth, but having become friends with John Middleton Murry, author, critic, journalist, and husband of Katherine Mansfield.
Memoir of the Bobotes (1964) is based on Cary's experiences as a Red Cross medical orderly in the Balkans (1912–13). In July 1913 an invitation to Dublin from Sir Horace Plunkett (qv) to work for the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society fell through when others in the society insisted that the job required agricultural expertise. Cary joined the Northern Nigerian political service and served in Africa (1913–20), participating and being wounded in the Cameroon campaign (1915–16). He set up home at 12 Parks Road, Oxford, when invalided out.
His first novel was preceded by a long gestation period, during which a number of his short stories appeared in publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and the Strand under the name ‘Thomas Joyce’. Aissa saved (1932) shared its African setting with An American visitor (1933), The African witch (1936), and Mister Johnson (1939). Although critically well received, this work did not enjoy a large readership. Cary's time in Africa engendered a commitment to issues of race relations and colonial independence. He travelled to West Africa (1943) for the British ministry of information to script a film, ‘Men of two worlds’. A similar project in India (1946) had to be abandoned owing to political unrest. Cary wrote pamphlets including The case for African freedom (1941), Britain and West Africa (1946), and – at the instigation of George Orwell – the political treatise Power in men (1939) for the Liberal Book Club. He refused an offer to stand as a Liberal parliamentary candidate in 1939; his literary career was just beginning to bear financial fruit.
Castle Corner (1938) was one of only two novels set in Ireland, the other being the ‘captivating’ A house of children (1941), inspired by memories of childhood holidays in Ireland, which was awarded the James Tait Black memorial prize. In 1944 he published Charley is my darling and a poor attempt at drama entitled The king is dead, long live the king. He planned three trilogies focusing on the themes of art, politics, and religion: Herself surprised (1941), To be a pilgrim (1942), and the critically acclaimed and commercially successful The horse's mouth (1944) comprise the trilogy on art. Two long poems (Marching soldier (1945) and The drunken sailor (1947)), two novels (A fearful joy (1949) and The moonlight (1952)), and an unfilmed screenplay were written before the political trilogy of Prisoner of grace (1952), Except the Lord (1953), and Not honour more (1955) followed.
In 1949 he declined a CBE, saying it was an inappropriate way to recognise literary work, but he may have been offended at not being offered a knighthood. He received an honorary doctorate of law from Edinburgh University in 1953. Due to the onset of motor neuron disease the 1956 Clark lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, entitled ‘Art and reality’, were delivered for him by his nephew, and the projected trilogy on religion became a single novel, The captive and the free, published posthumously (1959). He died 29 March 1957 in Oxford. He married (1916) Gertrude Margaret (d. 1949), daughter of William Maxwell Ogilvie, engineer and director of Balfour, Lyon & Co. They had four sons.