author
Gilbert Cannan
1884–1955
A British novelist and dramatist with a vivid, restless imagination, he turned his own life into fiction and became known for the semi-autobiographical Lawrie Saga. His career promised a great deal, but it was also deeply shaped by pacifism, artistic friendships, and long struggles with mental illness.
6 Audiobooks
Mummery: A Tale of Three Idealists
by Gilbert Cannan
Young Earnest: The Romance of a Bad Start in Life
by Gilbert Cannan
Windmills: A book of fables
by Gilbert Cannan
Mendel: A Story of Youth
by Gilbert Cannan
About the author
Born in Manchester on June 25, 1884, Gilbert Cannan was educated at Manchester Grammar School and later studied modern languages at King's College, Cambridge. After early work connected with the theatre, he moved fully into writing and became known as a novelist, dramatist, critic, and translator.
Cannan wrote with strong personal feeling, often drawing on his own experiences and the people around him. He is especially remembered for the Lawrie Saga, a semi-autobiographical sequence of novels, and for his links to the lively literary and artistic world of early 20th-century Britain. During the First World War he was a pacifist and a conscientious objector, convictions that also found their way into his fiction.
His life and career were increasingly troubled by mental illness, which limited his later work and overshadowed the promise many readers saw in him early on. He died near Virginia Water, Surrey, on June 30, 1955, but his books still offer an intimate glimpse of the emotional, political, and artistic tensions of his time.