Marlow, Louis, 1881-1966

Epithet: novelist, al 'Louis Marlow'

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000000349.0x0003af

Louis Umfreville Wilkinson was born in 1881, the only son of a clergyman. He attended Radley School where he struck up a correspondence with Oscar Wilde, then imprisoned in Reading Goal. He attended Oxford for four semesters before being "sent down" for blasphemousness in 1901. He next went to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree and published his first novel in 1905. Also at Cambridge he made a group of lifelong friends including Llewelyn Powys, J.C. Squire, Ronald Storrs, and Ralph Strauss. Powys' two brothers, John Cowper and Theodore Francis, also became close friends.

Throughout his life Wilkinson wrote autobiographical and satirical novels, publishing them under the pseudonym Louis Marlow. He supported himself largely through writing, though he also took to the lecture circuit on occasion. He was married four times and upon his death in 1966 he had two surviving children.

From the guide to the Louis Umfreville Wilkinson Collection TXRC02-A6., 1916-1960, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin)