A writer of novels, short stories, poetry, and criticism, 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, John 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 now teaches at his alma mater. Wain's first marriage, to Marianne Urmstrom in 1947, ended in 1956, and he married Eirian James in 1960. He has three children.

In his autobiography, Sprightly Running (1962), Wain recounts several childhood episodes of fear and anxiety involving boys who terrorized him. The stories sound real enough, painful enough, and familiar enough, but more than this, they help explain what may be Wain's central, thematic preoccupation in his writing: the survival of the individual with dignity and purpose in a world...