W. N. P. Barbellion

The name—the pseudonym—comes, in the case of the surname, from that of the proprietor of a chain of sweetshops with branches in South Kensington, Bond Street and elsewhere; the initials stand for the world’s three greatest failures—Wilhelm, Nero and Pilate. The announcement of the author's death at the close of The Journal of a Disappointed Man is premature, a joke. The fact is, he said later, no man dare remain alive after writing such a book. The Journal went through three impressions in six months. It was both praised and maligned. Some people thought it a ficcione written by H. G. Wells. During the middle part of 1919 Barbellion corrected the proofs of his second book, Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains, which he did not live to see published. W. N. P. Barbellion died properly on the 22nd October 1919.