Profile of Hugh Walpole on Famous Like Me

Hugh Seymour Walpole (March 13, 1884 - June 1, 1941), was an English novelist.

He was born in Auckland in New Zealand and educated in England at the KIng's School, Canterbury and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He worked as a teacher before turning to writing full time. His first novel was The Wooden Horse (1909), with Fortitude (1913) his first great success. He worked for the Red Cross in Russia during World War I, experiences which fed his The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919). The latter won the inaugural James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

His best known work is the family saga The Herries Chronicle, comprising Rogue Herries (1930), Judith Paris (1931), The Fortress (1932) and Vanessa (1933). Farthing Hall (1929) was produced in collaboration with J.B. Priestley.

Walpole's work was very popular, and brought him great financial rewards. He was a prolific worker who embraced a variety of genres. These included: short stories; school novels (Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, 1911 and the Jeremy trilogy) that delve deep into the psychology of boyhood; gothic horror novels (Portrait of a Man with Red Hair, 1925 and The Killer & The Slain, 1942); biographies (of Joseph Conrad in 1916, James Branch Cabell in 1920 and Anthony Trollope in 1928); plays and the screenplay for the George Cukor-directed David Copperfield (1935).

He was knighted in 1937. He died while doing volunteer war work in 1941.

Walpole was a key member of the exclusive homosexual coterie in 1930s London, which included Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, and Evelyn Waugh.

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