Talk:Gordon Bowker (writer)

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Briggs, Austin (Fall 2011). "Review: A New Life of Joyce". James Joyce Literary Supplement. 25 (2): 2–4. JSTOR 26635474.
Hagen, W. M. (Autumn 1996). "Review: Pursued by Furies—A Life of Malcolm Lowry by Gordon Bowker". World Literature Today. 70 (4): 968. JSTOR 40152423.
Ingersoll, Earl G. (Winter 1999). "Review: Through the Dark Labyrinth—A Biography of Lawrence Durrell". Studies in the Novel. 31 (4): 518–521. JSTOR 29533361.
Andrews, Marke (23 October 1993). "Biographer Left Few Volcanoes Unturned". The Vancouver Sun. p. B8 – via Newspapers.com.

Sourcing

@Geneus01: I'm struggling to find a source for Bowker's death date or the name of his spouse. Where did you find this information? – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 22:39, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Bolingbroke: A good point and one that could benefit from advice: I knew about Bowker's death from friends who had attended his funeral. I then contacted his wife out of respect to ensure that she was okay with my publishing a short pen-portrait on Wiki so soon after he had died. Wikipedia is public sourced aimed at the public good and so can only accept secondary references not primary (I can't use the academic tag "pers.comm."). Do you have any suggestions?Geneus01 (talk) 05:40, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is there no published material that mentions Bowker's death, perhaps an obituary in a local paper? Unless there is source, we unfortunately cannot include the death date. Per WP:PRIMARY, "Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, because that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material". I have removed the unsourced information for now, but I would be glad to restore it if we can find a source. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 21:12, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Bolingbroke: I had looked but failed to find one - I will contact the family to see where it was announced. Thanks for your efforts in gathering citations. I will spend a couple of days digging around and recovering the article somewhat, so that the half of his life that proved so productive and valuable to public interest can receive the attention it warrants. All interesting stuff...Geneus01 (talk) 05:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Bolingbroke: I have restored reporting Bowker's death, having found it in the probate records. I have also learned that he was cremated at Kensal Green Crematorium and interned at Brompton Cemetery London under a ceremony conducted by the British Humanist Society in Garden of Remembrance, which I can't cite because none of it was ever published. Nothing is ever straight forward is it (rhet)?

Disambiguation

@Lord Bolingbroke: I hope you don't mind my asking you this - but Gordon Bowker is known throughout the literary world as just "Gordon Bowker". Wikipedia alone has 21 citations for him but there are other Gordon Bowkers (that name has been taken by a co-founder of a popular coffee company). "Gordon Philip Bowker" is his unique identifier but no one knows him by that name. So I went in to his citations and hard wired his identity with Gordon Bowker. There is a cleverer way of doing this without calling him "Gordon Bowker (biographer)" - can you tell me what that is?Geneus01 (talk) 05:59, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Geneus01, I'm just now coming back to this after reviewing some old edits of mine. As you said, "Gordon Bowker" is the common name for the subject of this article, so I went ahead and moved it to Gordon Bowker (writer). In my judgement, the American entrepreneur of the same name is the primary topic—compare the pageviews for the two articles—so the title of his article should remain Gordon Bowker and we can link to this article with a hatnote.

Regarding how to link Bowker in citations, if the citations are using CS1 templates like {{cite book}}, you can fill in the |author-link= parameter with the full title of the article: |author-link=Gordon Bowker (writer). Otherwise, you can just use a standard piped wikilink. Because the subject of this article isn't the primary topic and we need some kind of parenthetical qualifier to differentiate him from the American entrepreneur, there isn't really a "cleverer" way to link to him. Hopefully this is helpful. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 19:47, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Lord Bolingbroke: - I had notice the move and agree with your reasoning. I'll set about mending broken links - I appreciate the process check and suggestions!Geneus01 (talk) 21:52, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]