Ernest Raymond Biography

British novelist, essayist, and biographer, born in France, educated at Chichester Theological College; he was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1914 and resigned in 1923. His first and most popular novel, Tell England (1922), was based upon his experiences in the First World War, when he served as a clergyman. His long series of novels, entitled A London Gallery, dealt frequently with a search for personal faith. This topic perhaps drew him to the Brontës, Keats, and Shelley, writers on whom he wrote popular biographies. His own autobiographical volumes, The Story of My Days (1968), Please You, Draw Near (1969), and Good Morning, Good People (1970), are a useful insight into the values of mid-twentieth-century England and explain why Raymond's novels, which were once so fashionable, are now so dated.