1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lawrence, George Alfred

LAWRENCE, GEORGE ALFRED (1827–1876), English novelist, was born at Braxted, Essex, on the 25th of March 1827, and was educated at Rugby and at Balliol college, Oxford. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1852, but soon abandoned the law for literature. In 1857 he published, anonymously, his first novel, Guy Livingstone, or Thorough. The book achieved a very large sale, and had nine or ten successors of a similar type, the best perhaps being Sword and Gown (1859). Lawrence may be regarded as the originator in English fiction of the beau sabreur type of hero, great in sport and love and war. He died at Edinburgh on the 23rd of September 1876.