Due to his severe asthma, Manning was educated at home. As a young man he formed a friendship with Arthur Galton, an English scholar, eventually moving to England in 1903 and residing with him. There he was encouraged to write by Galton and his newly acquired friends Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. In 1907, he published The Vigil of Brunhild, his first book of verse which was well-received. He enlisted in the King's Shropshire light infantry in 1915 and took part in the battle of the Somme in 1916. In 1917, he was sent to Ireland as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish regiment. He resigned his commission in 1918 and returned to London where he published a few works over the next decade. In 1929, he published The Middle Parts of Fortune, a superb work which won accolades from T.E. Lawrence, Hemingway and many others. This story of the western front from the soldier's perspective used language that was considered vulgar at the tie and an expurgated version, Her Privates We, appeared the following year. manning used his army number "Private 19022" as a pseudonym for this work. He contracted pneumonia at a Hampstead nursing home and together with the complications of his asthma, succumbed in 1935. His other works include Scenes and Portraits (1909), Poems (1910), Eidola (1917) and Life of Sir William White (1923). |
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