author
Edward Shanks
1892–1953
A versatile English man of letters, he moved from First World War poetry into criticism, journalism, biography, and imaginative fiction. His work often carries the thoughtful, unsettled mood of a generation shaped by war.
3 Audiobooks
Poems
by Edward Shanks
Hilaire Belloc, the man and his work
by C. Creighton Mandell, Edward Shanks
About the author
Born in London in 1892, Edward Shanks became known first as a war poet of the First World War. After military service was cut short by injury, he built a wide-ranging literary career that included poetry, novels, criticism, journalism, and biography.
He was one of those writers who seemed at home in several corners of the literary world at once: an academic and reviewer, but also a creative writer with a strong feel for atmosphere and ideas. Among his best-remembered books is The People of the Ruins (1920), an early speculative novel that helped secure his place in the history of British science fiction.
Shanks later wrote literary studies and biographies, including books on figures such as Hilaire Belloc, Edgar Allan Poe, and Rudyard Kipling. He died in 1953, leaving behind work that bridges poetry, criticism, and fiction with quiet intelligence and range.