Wilfrid Sheed

File:Wilfrid Sheed Author.Jpg

Wilfrid Sheed in 1987

Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed (27 December 1930 – 19 January 2011) was an English novelist and essayist.

Biography

Wilfrid Sheed was born in London, the son of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, prominent Roman Catholic publishers (Sheed & Ward) in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-20th century. Wilfrid Sheed spent his childhood in both England and the United States before attending Downside School and Lincoln College, Oxford where he earned BA (1954) and MA (1957) degrees.

Sheed's first novel, A Middle Class Education (1961; earlier in the UK), was based on his experiences at Oxford. Sheed contributed to Horizon, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wilson Quarterly and Commonweal among other periodicals.

His biography Frank and Maisie was about his parents' literary establishment and intellectual world. He wrote satirical novels about journalism and memoirs in his later years. His book on American popular music, entitled The House that George Built with a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of about Fifty was published in 2008.

He died on 19 January 2011, aged 80, from urosepsis in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Private life

Sheed was a great-great-grandson of William Ward (cricketer) and of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk and Augusta Mary Minna Catherine Lyons; a great-grandson of William George Ward; a grandson of Wilfrid Philip Ward; a nephew of Father Leo Ward, a missioner in Japan; the son of Maisie Ward and Frank Sheed, the co-founders of Sheed & Ward; and the brother of the translator, Rosemary Sheed. Among Sheed's more remote ancestors was John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk.

He married Maria Bullitt Darlington in 1957 and they had three children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1967. He remarried in 1972 to cookbook author Miriam Ungerer. At his death he was survived by his second wife, three children, a sister, two stepdaughters and four grandchildren.

G. K. Chesterton was his godfather.

Works

Novels

• A Middle Class Education (1961)
• The Hack (1963)
• Square's Progress (1965)
• Office Politics (1966)
• The Blacking Factory & Pennsylvania Gothic: A Short Novel and a Long Story (1968)
• Max Jamison (1970)
• The Critic: A Novel (1970)
• People Will Always Be Kind (1973)
• The Boys of Winter: A Novel (1987)

Non-fiction

• Joseph (1958)
• The Morning After: Selected Essays and Reviews (1971)
• Three Mobs: Labor, Church, and Mafia (1974)
• Muhammad Ali: A Portrait in Words and Photographs (1975)
• The Good Word & Other Words (1978)
• Transatlantic Blues (1978)
• Clare Boothe Luce (1982)
• Frank and Maisie: A Memoir with Parents (1985)
• The Kennedy Legacy: A Generation Later (1988; with photographer Jacques Lowe)
• Essays in Disguise (1990)
• Baseball and Lesser Sports (1991)
• My Life as a Fan: A Memoir (1993)
• In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery (1995)
• The House that George Built with a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of about Fifty'' (2007)

As editor

• G. K. Chesterton, Essays and Poems (1958)
• Sixteen Short Novels: An Anthology (1985)

Awards and honours

• 1967 finalist, National Book Award for Fiction, for his novel Office Politics
• 1987 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for his liner notes for The Voice – The Columbia Years 1943–1952, performed by Frank Sinatra.

Further reading

• Frank Sheed (1974), The Church and I, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• Maisie Ward (1963), Unfinished Business, New York: Sheed & Ward.
• Maisie Ward (1973), To and Fro on the Earth: A Sequel to an Autobiography, New York: Sheed & Ward.

External links

• Works by Wilfrid Sheed at Hathi Trust
• Works by Wilfrid Sheed at Internet Archive
• Works by Wilfrid Sheed at Unz.com
• Writer's Almanac
• Seattle Public Library's online catalog