Over the years his novels became less comically boisterous and more pessimistic, as his thematic concerns shifted from the repressions of society to "the effects of loneliness and the remoteness of love," according to Dale Salwak in
John Wain (1981). Wain's short stories show similar concerns, but, particularly in the more successful ones, he examines evil, self-destruction, and interior corrosiveness. He treats these issues philosophically, even religiously, not as case studies in social or psychological "causes" but as mysteries of human nature to be explored but never fully understood.
John Barrington Wain was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, to a dentist, Arnold A. Wain, and his wife, Anne. After attending high school in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Wain went on to St. John's College, Oxford, where he received a B.A. in 1946. Staying on as Fereday Fellow at Oxford (1946-1949), Wain was granted an M.A. in 1950 and served as an instructor at his alma mater. Wain's first marriage, to Marianne Urmstrom in 1947, ended in 1956, and he married Eirian James in 1960. They had three children. Eirian James died in 1987, and Wain married Patricia Dunn in 1988.
In his autobiography, Sprightly Running (1962), Wain recounts several childhood episodes of fear and anxiety involving boys who terrorized him.
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