Early Life
He was born in Johannesburg. He was the son of Lieut Col. C. A. Madge and Barbara, née Hylton Foster, and the brother of the sociologist John Madge who wrote The Origins of Scientific Sociology.
Charles was educated at Winchester College and Magdalene College, Cambridge (which he left without a degree). He was a literary figure from his early twenties, becoming a friend of David Gascoyne; like Gascoyne he was generally classed as a surrealist poet. He worked for a spell as a reporter for the Daily Mirror. By the end of the 1930s, he was more involved in Mass-Observation surveys and reports, socialist realism (in theory) and Communism.
The two Madges were active in Cambridge University Socialist Society. Cyril Bibby comments with reference to them as well as Maurice Dobb, the Cumming-Bruce twins, Margot Heinemann and "the beautiful Eileen Wynne" that "it was noticeable how many of these extreme left-wingers came from privileged upper-class homes" (Reminiscences of a Happy Life, p. 171)
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