Sherard Vines

Who was Sherard Vines?

Walter Sherard Vines was an English writer and academic who wrote poetry, novels, and criticism.

He was born in Oxford and educated at Magdalen College School and New College, Oxford. He was published in Oxford Poetry, and took an academic position at Belfast University in 1914. He served in the British Army until 1917, when he was invalided out. Poems of his were included in the Sitwell Wheels anthologies. It was probably through Edmund Blunden that he was published in The Nation

Vines wrote several novels, including a satirical fantasy about Satan, Return, Belphegor!. Starting in 1923, he taught for five years at Keio University in Tokyo where he was a colleague of Yone Noguchi. During that period he was for a time tutor to Prince Chichibu. He contributed while there to Edmund Blunden's Oriental Literary Times. In 1929 he was appointed as the first GF Grant Professor of English at the University College of Hull. He retired in 1952 and died on 12 April 1974.