E. V. Lucas
E. V. Lucas, born on June 11, 1868, in Eltham, Kent, England, was a prominent writer known for his essays and novels. Raised in Brighton, Lucas had a tumultuous relationship with his father, which influenced his early education—he attended nine different schools before being apprenticed to a bookseller at sixteen. His literary career began in earnest with his work as a columnist for the London periodical the Globe from 1893 to 1900, and he later joined the editorial staff of Punch, where he served for over three decades.
Lucas married American Elizabeth Gertrude Griffin in 1897, and they had one daughter, Audrey. Despite a prolific writing career marked by the production of thirteen novels, which he referred to as "entertainments," Lucas's fiction did not achieve commercial success during his lifetime. However, he gained recognition as a compassionate and satirical chronicler of society, drawing comparisons to literary figures like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. His legacy is preserved through his extensive personal papers housed in various prestigious institutions, including the British Library and Columbia University.
On this Page
Subject Terms
E. V. Lucas
- Born: June 11, 1868
- Birthplace: Eltham, Kent, England
- Died: June 26, 1938
Biography
E.V. Lucas was born on June 11, 1868, in Eltham, Kent, England, the son of Alfred and Jane (Drewett) Lucas. Lucas’s mother was a member of the Society of Friends, and his father was an insurance agent. Before Lucas’s first birthday, his family moved to Brighton in Sussex, England, where Lucas lived until the age of twenty-three. As a young man, his relationship with his father was full of conflict, the elder Lucas being a man who was apparently both argumentative and tightfisted. Lucas was entered into nine different schools, and his father withdrew him from all of them. At the age of sixteen, Lucas was apprenticed to a bookseller in Brighton, England; in 1892, a kindly uncle provided some support to enable Lucas to attend lectures at University College in London.
From 1893 to 1900, Lucas worked as a columnist for the London periodical the Globe, and he served on the editorial staff of Punch from 1904 to 1938. He married an American, Elizabeth Gertrude Griffin, in 1897, and this union produced one child, a daughter, Audrey, who was born in 1898. After twenty years of marriage, the couple separated at the end of World War I and Lucas returned to London, having already established himself as a writer of high quality and variety.
Lucas was perhaps best known and most praised in his own time as an essayist, but he was also the author of thirteen novels. His fiction, which he termed “entertainments,” is largely reminiscent in tone and subject of the work of earlier writers such as Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. His view of society is at once compassionate and satirical, and expressed through the consciousness of a consistent narrative persona.
Although his novels never sold well even in his lifetime, Lucas prospered for nearly fifty years as one of the most accomplished and respected literary men in London. His personal papers have been widely collected at several institutions, including the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas; the Butler Library of Columbia University in New York City; and the British Library in London.