author
Roger Ingpen
1868–1936
A literary editor and anthologist with a gift for bringing older voices back to life, he is best remembered for books that introduced classic poetry and biography to new generations of readers. His work moves easily between children’s verse, literary lives, and vivid accounts of wartime Europe.
1 Audiobook
The Fighting Retreat To Paris
by Roger Ingpen
About the author
Born in the late 1860s and active in Britain’s literary world around the turn of the 20th century, Roger Edric Ingpen worked as an author, editor, publisher, and biographer. Sources agree that he was connected with The Cornhill Magazine in the 1890s, and he also contributed articles to the Dictionary of National Biography.
Ingpen had a clear talent for editing and selection. He prepared editions such as The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt and became especially well known for One Thousand Poems for Children, an anthology that helped keep a wide range of English verse in circulation for younger readers. His other books include The Glory of Belgium and The Fighting Retreat to Paris, showing his interest in both literary subjects and contemporary history.
He died in 1936. Although he is not as widely remembered as some of the writers he edited, his career shows the quiet importance of literary curatorship: choosing, shaping, and reintroducing books in ways that help them endure.