Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was born in London in 1886 and was an experimental novelist. Throughout his career he has been championed by English novelists including E.M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Alan Hollinghurst and Simon Raven, writing novels such as Valmouth and The Flower Beneath the Foot and six other short novels. He died in Rome in 1926 and is buried in the Campo Verano cemetery.