Bayley, John. The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature—Essays, 1962-2002. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. The collected essays of this major critic feature one on Blake (C. Day Lewis) and his use of pastiche, both in poetry and in fiction. Index.

Daiches, David. Poetry and the Modern World: A Study of Poetry in England Between 1900 and 1939. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940. Daiches devotes a full chapter to Day Lewis and the problems facing the poet: how to face the disintegrating civilization after World War I? What audience would a poet write for? Instead of turning to mysticism or religion as did William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot, Day Lewis seeks a singleness of personality in revolutionary hope and mature self-understanding. A major study of this important poet.

Day-Lewis, Sean. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980. The first son of Blake wrote this year-by-year biography of his father within a decade of his father’s death. Family members and friends contributed material to an objective but intimate portrait of the poet. Both the poetry publications and the crime novels under the name Nicholas Blake are discussed.

Gelpi, Albert. Living in Time: The Poetry of C. Day Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A full-length critical study of the works of Day Lewis and a record of his poetry within the literary ferment of the twentieth century. Explores the three major periods of the poet’s development, beginning with the emergence of Day Lewis in the 1930’s as the most radical of the Oxford poets.

Gindin, James. “C. Day Lewis: Moral Doubling in Nicholas Blake’s Detective Fiction of the 1930’s.” In Recharting the Thirties, edited by Patrick J. Quinn. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1996. Discusses the moral elements of Blake’s fiction that place it distinctively within the Great Britain of the 1930’s. Bibliographic references and index.

Malmgren, Carl D. Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001. Discusses Blake’s Head of a Traveler and A Penknife in My Heart. Bibliographic references and index.

“Nicholas Blake.” In Modern Mystery Writers, edited by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1995. Critical, scholarly examination of Blake’s work and its place in the mystery-fiction canon. Bibliographic references.

Riddel, Joseph N. C. Day Lewis. New York: Twayne, 1971. Riddel argues that Day Lewis should be known as more than a member of the “Auden group” of British poets of the 1930’s. His poetry is considered chronologically with emphasis on the creative and radical period from 1929 to 1938. The problems of language, individual psychology, the “divided self,” and the lyric impulse are enduring themes. An essential study supplemented by notes and a bibliography.

Roth, Marty. Foul and Fair Play: Reading Genre in Classic Detective Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. A post-structural analysis of the conventions of mystery and detective fiction. Examines 138 short stories and works from the 1840’s to the 1960’s. Helps place Blake within the context of the genre.

Smith, Elton Edward. The Angry Young Men of the Thirties. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975. In his first chapter, “C. Day-Lewis: The Iron Lyricist,” Smith outlines the dilemma of British poets in the 1930’s, a decade of worldwide economic collapse. This study of poetry is thus useful for contextualizing the poet’s detective fiction as well.

Tolley, A. T. The Poetry of the Thirties. London: Gollancz, 1975. In chapter 6, “Poetry and Politics,” Tolley discusses the political content of Day Lewis’s poetry, his adherence to Marxism as a solution to the pressing contemporary problems, and the subsequent development away from the party in “Overtures to Death.” His concern for the Spanish Civil War conflict is apparent; the mood is somber and disaster seems imminent. Along with political events, the problem of a divided self continues to occupy the poet’s thoughts.