LUCAS, E(dward) V(errall)

(1868-1938)

   UK editor and writer, the author of innumerable "weekend" essays and tamely belletristic travel books. Of his several novels, The War of the Wenuses (1898), with C(harles) L(arcom) Graves (1856-1944), isof interest as a mildly sexist parody of H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898). Wisdom while You Wait: Being a Foretaste of the"Insidecompletuar Britanniaware" (1903), also with Graves, mocks the future Americanization of the world in the form of a parody encyclopedia; further joint titles, in a similar vein, include England Day by Day: A Guide to Efficiency and Prophetic Calendar for 1904 (1903) and If: ANightmare in the Conditional Mood (1908). Mr Pulteney (1910 chap) as by E. D. Ward - a pseudonym which is simply EVL's first name - is fantasy, featuring a hotel with an ANTIGRAVITY garden for the use of suicides. Wells and Winston Churchill make appearances.

   JC