Francis Warner (author)

Francis Warner was born in Bishopthorpe, Yorkshire, England,International Who's Who in Poetry 2004 to Reverend Hugh Compton Warner and Nancy Le Plastrier Owen.{{Cite web|url=https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/l/e/p/Vincent-Le-plastrier/GENE1-0015.html|title=Vincent-Le-plastrier - User Trees - Genealogy.com|website=www.genealogy.com|accessdate=8 November 2023}} After serving as vicar of Bishopthorpe from 1932-1938,E.H. Eckel, Book Review, Nancy Le Plastrier Warner, Hugh Compton Warner: The Story of a Vocation (London: S.P.C.K. 1958), in 29 Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 98-99 (1960).

Rev Warner became vicar of St Martin of Tours in Epsom in 1938,Roger Martin (2019). [https://eehe.org.uk/?p=61262 The Rectors & Vicars of St Martin of Tours, Epsom], Epsom & Ewell History Explorer. Retrieved 3 September 2020. an incumbency he held until his resignation in 1950 to become education secretary of the Church of England Moral Welfare Council.Brian Bouchard (Feb. 2013). [https://eehe.org.uk/?p=29850 The Old Vicarage], Epsom & Ewell History Explorer. Retrieved 3 September 2020. Rev Warner and his family lived in The Old Vicarage, Epsom, throughout World War II, an experience recalled later by Francis in the collection Beauty for Ashes: Selected Prose and Related Documents and the text of David Goode's Blitz Requiem.{{Cite web|url=https://www.classicfm.com/radio/shows-presenters/full-works-concert/full-works-concert-thursday-3-october-blitz-requie/|title = The Full Works Concert – Thursday 3 October: Blitz Requiem}} The elder Warner, who had become an honorary canon of Guildford Cathedral in 1948, died in London, age 51, after a long illness, on 1 July 1956.

Francis was educated at Christ's Hospital, London College of Music, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge, Warner was C.S. Lewis's last graduate student.C.S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper (London: T&T Clark 2011), p. x

Francis spent much of his academic career at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he was Lord White Fellow, and Tutor in English Literature from 1965–99.{{Cite web|url=https://www.spc.ox.ac.uk/news/francis-warner-1937-2021|title=Francis Warner (1937-2021) | St Peter's College Oxford|website=www.spc.ox.ac.uk|accessdate=8 November 2023}} After retirement, he was elected Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford.{{Cite web|url=https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/dr-f-warner|title=Dr Francis Warner (1937–2021) | St Catharine's College, Cambridge|website=www.caths.cam.ac.uk|accessdate=8 November 2023}}

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Warner produced several volumes of lyrical poetry early in his career and was honoured for his poetry as the recipient of the Messing Award (now known as the St. Louis Literary Award) in 1972 by the St. Louis University Library Associates. Warner began writing plays in the early 1970s, creating a body of theatrical work that would later be styled as the dramatic play cycle Agora. In addition to the plays in Agora, Warner continued writing poetry, publishing several volumes throughout his later literary years.

The dramatic cycle Agora encompasses the entirety of Warner's literary output as a dramatist. Consisting of 16 individual plays, loosely following a chronological order of action, Agora tracks the development of Western culture from ancient Greece to the present.

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Category:1937 births

Category:2021 deaths

Category:20th-century English poets

Category:English male dramatists and playwrights

Category:Fellows of St Peter's College, Oxford

Category:Fellows of St Catharine's College, Cambridge