Walter Lionel George

Walter Lionel George, usually published as W. L. George, was born on March 20, 1882, in Paris and died on January 30, 1926. Although he was British, he grew up in France and reportedly did not learn English until he was about twenty, which makes his later success as an English-language writer especially striking.

After moving to London in 1905, he worked as a journalist before turning fully to literature. His breakthrough novel, A Bed of Roses (1911), helped establish him as a popular author, and he went on to write novels, short fiction, essays, and political works. His writing is often described as socially engaged, with recurring feminist, pacifist, and pro-labor themes.

George was commercially successful in his lifetime, even if he was not always warmly embraced by the literary establishment. Today he is remembered as a vivid, energetic storyteller whose fiction captured the pressures and possibilities of modern life in the years before and after the First World War.