Eric Rücker Eddison

Born in Yorkshire in 1882, he was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, and went on to a long career in the British civil service. Alongside that work, he built a reputation as one of the important early writers of modern fantasy, publishing under the name E. R. Eddison.

His best-known novel, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), helped establish his lasting place in the genre. He later developed the world of Zimiamvia in a sequence of novels that began with Mistress of Mistresses and continued with A Fish Dinner in Memison; a final volume, The Mezentian Gate, was published after his death.

He was also known as a scholar and admirer of Norse and Icelandic literature, and that love of older heroic traditions runs through his fiction. Readers often remember his work for its rich language, mythic atmosphere, and bold, aristocratic imagination.