Frank Harris (Frank James Thomas Harris) Biography

British writer and critic, born in Galway. After early travels in America and Europe, he rose to fame as a dynamic editor of the Evening News (1882–6) and the Fortnightly Review (1886–94), but exerted most influence as editor of the Saturday Review (1894–8), publishing works by Hardy, Wells, Beerbohm, and Arthur Symons, with Shaw as drama critic from 1895. As well as novels, volumes of short stories, and plays he wrote biographies of his friend Oscar Wilde (1916) and of Shaw (1931), completed by Shaw himself to benefit Harris's estate, and The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story (1909). Harris's reputation became tarnished by his continual assaults on Victorian values, and by his unashamed arrogance. Various rumours and his vainglorious and sexually explicit memoirs, My Life and Loves (four volumes, 1922–7) caused further scandal. There are biographies by Hugh Kingsmill (1932) and by Philippa Pullar (1975).