Edward Shanks
Illustration — The Bystander, 1934 Edward Richard Buxton Shanks (11 June 1892 – 4 May 1953) was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, then as an academic and journalist, and literary critic and biographer. He also wrote some science fiction. He was born in London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Also recorded as Edward Richard Buxton Shanks
Edward Shanks
" Mr. Edward Shanks's Best New Novel ", The Bystander 7 August 1934 p 260 · Public domain
- Born
- 1892 · London.
- Died
- 1953
- Nationality
- United Kingdom · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- Occupation
- poet · journalist · writer · novelist · literary critic · university teacher
- Fields
- English-language literature · English poetry · biography · science fiction
- Education
- Merchant Taylors' School
- Honours
- Hawthornden Prize
- Languages
- English
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Documentary summary
Illustration — The Bystander, 1934 Edward Richard Buxton Shanks (11 June 1892 – 4 May 1953) was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, then as an academic and journalist, and literary critic and biographer. He also wrote some science fiction. He was born in London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Note VALÉORINE
Edward Shanks (1892–1953) was a British and British journalist, literary critic and novelist, among other activities. The journalist was born in London.
Edward Shanks studied at Merchant Taylors' School. The journalist was active in biography, English poetry and English-language literature.
Languages used include English. Edward Shanks received Hawthornden Prize.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 01 October 2026
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wikidata · Q1293611 · wikipedia · Edward Shanks
In this article
Works
Works
• Songs (1915) poems • Hilaire Belloc, the man and his work (1916) with C. Creighton Mandell • Poems (1916) • The Queen of China and Other Poems (1919) poems • The Old Indispensables (1919) novel • The People of the Ruins (1920) novel Text at Project Gutenberg Australia • The Island of Youth and Other Poems (1921) poems • The Richest Man (1923) novel • First Essays on Literature (1923) criticism • Fête Galante (1923) opera libretto • Bernard Shaw (1924) criticism • The Shadowgraph and Other Poems (1925) • Collected Poems (1900–1925) (1926) • The Beggar's Ride (1926) drama • Second Essays on Literature (1927) criticism (W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London) • Queer Street (1933) • The Enchanted Village (1933) (A sequel "Queer Street", however, this one more uncommon) • Poems 1912–1932 (1933) • Tom Tiddler's Ground (1934) • Old King Cole (1936) novel • Edgar Allan Poe (1937) • My England (1939) • Rudyard Kipling – A Study in Literature and Political Ideas (1940) • Poems 1939–1952 (1953)
Identity
Identity
Edward Shanks is recorded as poet, journalist, writer, novelist and literary critic.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1892
Edward Shanks born at London.
1953
Edward Shanks died.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Edward Shanks”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q1293611: Edward Shanks
General reference · Wikidata
Awards and honors
He passed his B.A. in history in 1913. He was editor of Granta from 1912 to 1913. At Cambridge, Shanks befriend the poet Rupert Brooke. He served in World War I with the British Army in France, but was invalided out in 1915, and did administrative work until war's end. During this time, Shanks came into contact with Edward Marsh, who promoted Shanks' poetry in his Georgian Poetry anthologies. He was later a literary reviewer, working for the London Mercury (1919–22) and for a short while a lecturer at the University of Liverpool (1926). He was the chief leader-writer for the Evening Standard from 1928 to 1935. The People of the Ruins (1920) was a science-fiction novel by Shanks, in which a man wakes after being put into suspended animation in 1924, to discover a devastated Britain 150 years in the future. The People of the Ruins has an anti-communist subtext (the future 2074 is devastated by Marxist revolutionaries).
He was the first recipient of the Hawthornden Prize in 1919, for his collection The Queen of China and Other Poems.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.E. F. Bleiler and Richard Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years. Kent State University Press, 1990. (p.668). .
- 2.Paul March-Russell, "Introduction: A Modernist Apocalypse". The People of the Ruins. The Radium Age Series, MIT Press, 2024. (p. xvii-xxvii)
- 3.John Lucas, The Radical Twenties. Rutgers University Press 1999. (p. 154-55).
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- Ross, Robert H. (1965). The Georgian Revolt, 1910–1922 : Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal, Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press.
References
Citations
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General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,582 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
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