[1] Christopher St John Sprigg was born into a Roman Catholic family,[1] in Putney, London, on 20 October 1907.

In the summer of 1935, he wrote his first Marxist book entitled Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, which was published by Macmillan.

[1] According to the socialist magazine Monthly Review, Caudwell on 12 February 1937 "was killed by fascists in the valley of Jarama during the Spanish Civil War.

He died at a machine gun post, guarding the retreat of his comrades in the British Battalion of the International Brigade".

The Marxist academic John Bellamy Foster similarly credited Caudwell with "breathtaking intellectual achievements in a brief period of time".