Perhaps best known as a prolific novelist and poet, John Wain also gained acclaim as a critic and, within the last two decades, as a literary biographer. Wain's first volume of poetry, Mixed Feelings: Nineteen Poems (1951), was "the conventional limited edition of a 'slim volume,'" as Wain himself called it, and it was followed fairly rapidly by his appearance on First Readings, a BBC program highlighting modern writers. But poetic acclaim came with his later volumes, especially Weep Before God: Poems (1961).

Wain's first published novel, Hurry on Down (1953), garnered him a position among the up-and-coming young novelists of the 1950s: critics early grouped him with "The Angry Young Men," an array of authors that included Kingsley Amis, John Braine, and John Osborne. After this Wain wrote nearly a dozen novels, including The Contenders (1958), The Young Visitors (1965), A Winter in the Hills (1970), and The Pardoner's Tale (1978). He also...