Gilbert Cannan

[1] He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and King's College, Cambridge; he started on a legal career, but turned to writing in 1908, after a short spell as an actor.

In 1914, the novelist Henry James in an article in The Times named Cannan as one of four significant up-and-coming authors, alongside D. H. Lawrence, Compton Mackenzie and Hugh Walpole.

During it he moved in her circle, introducing her to D. H. Lawrence, and knew also Dora Carrington, Dorothy Brett and the artist Mark Gertler.

The mill was at Cholesbury in Buckinghamshire, where Cannan was living in 1916, and which attracted a number of his intellectual circle (including Lawrence and his wife Frieda, and Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry).

[4] In 1916, partly in response to the devastating effects of the war and the threat of conscription, Cannan suffered a mental breakdown, an experience which he vividly described in his book, The Release of the Soul.

Unconventionally, Cannan lived with Wilson and her new husband in a ménage à trois in their home, Mulberry House, in Smith Square, Westminster.