Sir Hugh Walpole (Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole) Biography

British novelist, born in New Zealand, educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the son of a canon who became bishop of Edinburgh in 1910. Like E. M. Forster he was a tutor to the children of Elizabeth von Arnim; he also taught at a preparatory school for a short time, which provided the background for his novel Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1911). His First World War experiences, serving with the Red Cross and with a British propaganda unit in Russia, were reflected in The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919). A sequence of three stories about a young boy, beginning with Jeremy (1919), introduced the cathedral city of Polchester which provided the setting for The Cathedral (1922); it also showed the influence of Trollope about whom he wrote in Anthony Trollope (1928). A darker current emerged in his two fantastic horror thrillers, The Old Ladies (1924) and Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre (1925). From 1924 Walpole lived in Cumberland, the setting of his ‘Herries Chronicle’ (Rogue Herries, 1930; Judith Paris, 1931; The Fortress, 1932; and Vanessa, 1933). As well as numerous novels he wrote critical works, plays and screenplays, and Joseph Conrad (1916, revised 1924). Walpole was a popular figure in literary circles of his time and a friend of Henry James, but he was concerned that his work lacked the innovation of contemporary modernist writers such as his friend, V. Woolf. There is a life by R. Hart-Davis (1952).