William Plomer, poet, novelist, and librettist, earned lasting fame through his first book, a novel of South Africa, Turbott Wolfe (1925), begun when he was nineteen. This novel established Plomer's reputation as a discriminating writer of exceptional sensitivity and as an important social critic, angry at the injustices of South African life. Following publication of the novel, Plomer became friendly with two of South Africa's most important writers, Roy Campbell and Laurens van der Post. (Van der Post wrote a lengthy introduction to Turbott Wolfe when it was republished by the Hogarth Press in 1965.)

Born in Pietersburg, Transvaal, to Charles and Edythe Waite-Browne Plomer, William Charles Franklin Plomer spent his childhood in both South Africa and England. He was educated at Beechmont (near Seven Oaks, England), Rugby, and St. John's College in Johannesburg. Although he considered himself an English writer and not a South African ("I once had a...