Maurice Baring

Maurice Baring (27 April 1874 – 14 December 1945) was a versatile English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent.

He was the eighth child, and fifth son, of Edward Charles Baring, first Baron Revelstoke, of the Baring banking family, and his wife Louisa Emily Charlotte Bulteel, granddaughter of the second Earl Grey. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. After an abortive start on a diplomatic career, he travelled widely, particularly in Russia. He reported as an eye-witness on the Russo-Japanese War for the London Morning Post.

At the start of World War I he joined the Royal Flying Corps, where he served as assistant to Trenchard. After the war he enjoyed a period of success as a dramatist, and began to write novels. He suffered from chronic illness in the last years of his life.

He was widely connected socially, to some of the Cambridge Apostles, to The Coterie, and to the literary group around G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in particular. He was staunch in his anti-intellectualism with respect to the arts, and a convinced practical joker. He became a Roman Catholic convert in 1909.

Works

• With the Russians in Manchuria (1905)
• Orpheus in Mayfair & Other Stories - short stories
• Overlooked - short story
• Dear Animated Bust Letters to Lady Juliet Duff (1915-1918)
• Flying Corps (1920)
• Passing By (1921) novel
• The Puppet Show of Memory (1922) autobiography
• C (1924), novel
• Cat's Cradle (1925) novel
• Daphne Adeane (1926) novel
• The Coat Without Seam (1929) novel
• Robert Peckham (1930) historical novel
• Comfortless Memory - novel
• Darby and Joan - novel
• Lost Diaries and Dead Letters - satirical collection
• Lost Lectures - imaginary lectures
• Punch & Judy - collection of essays and short stories
• The Lonely Lady of Dulwich - novella
• Tinker's Leave - novel
• In My End is My Beginning - novel & biography about Mary Stuart
• The Collected Poems of Maurice Baring - poetry
• Have You Anything to Declare? - collection of notes and quotes

References

• Maurice Baring Restored, Selections from his work (1970) edited by Paul Horgan
• Maurice Baring: A Citizen of Europe by Emma Letley