Eric Rucker Eddison was born on November 24, 1882 in Yorkshire, England. After graduating from Oxford he pursued a career in the British civil service. For his service to his country he was made Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1924 and Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1929.
In 1909 he married Winifred Grace Henderson. They had one daughter, Jean Gudrun Rucker Eddison, later Latham. They also had a son who served in the Royal Air Force and died in action in World War II.
Eddison had a lifelong interest in fantastic and heroic literature. He was fluent in Greek, Latin, French, and Icelandic.
He began writing his own stories at age ten. The Worm Ouroboros(1922) is the most well-known and successful of his books. It is now in the public domain. Its full text can be found on the Internet at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/
and at Lulu.com, free download:
http://www.lulu.com/content/162834
Eddison's other books are: Poems, Letters, and Memories of Philip Sidney Nairn (1916), Styrbiorn the Strong (1926), Egil's Saga: Done into English Out of the Icelandic with an Introduction, Notes, and an Essay on Some Principles of Translation (1930), Mistress of Mistresses, a Vision of Zimiamvia (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (unfinished but published by his widow in 1958).
Eddison died August 18, 1945.