author
E. V. (Edwin Vincent) Odle
1890–1942
Best known for the wildly imaginative novel The Clockwork Man, this early British science-fiction writer also worked as a playwright, critic, and magazine editor. His career moved between Bloomsbury literary circles and popular fiction, giving his work an unusual mix of wit, curiosity, and experiment.
1 Audiobook
The Clockwork Man
by E. V. (Edwin Vincent) Odle
About the author
Born in Brockley, Kent, in 1890, Edwin Vincent Odle was a British writer whose work ranged across fiction, criticism, and the stage. Reliable biographical sources describe him as a playwright, critic, and short-story writer, and place him in Bloomsbury, London, during the 1910s, where he was connected to a lively literary world.
Odle is now remembered above all for The Clockwork Man (1923), the novel that gave him a small but lasting place in early science fiction. Reference sources also note that he later served as editor of the British magazine The Argosy from the mid-1920s into the 1930s, a role that kept him close to popular storytelling as well as literary culture.
He died in 1942. Although he never became a household name, Odle's reputation has endured because of the originality of The Clockwork Man and the way his career linked avant-garde literary circles with the adventurous spirit of early genre fiction.