[1] His father was Lt. Col. Alfred Molyneaux Cranmer-Byng and his mother was Caroline Mary Tufnell.
[1] From around 1912, the two brothers were associated with the 'Warwick Circle' at Easton Lodge, whose other members included H. G. Wells, Ramsay MacDonald and the folk song collector Cecil Sharp.
[4] Cranmer-Byng is best known for his translations of Chinese poetry into English, such as The Never Ending Wrong (1902),[5] The Odes of Confucius (1908) and Lute of Jade: Selections from the Classical Poets of China (1909).
[1] A Feast of Lanterns (1936), published as part of John Murray's long-running Wisdom of the East series, of which he was a founder and editor, is a later anthology of ancient Chinese poetry, introduced and translated by Cranmer-Byng.
His translations were set to music by composers including Granville Bantock (Songs from the Chinese Poets),[6] Rebecca Clarke,[7] Bernard van Dieren, Harry Farjeon (The Lute of Jade song cycle, 1917), Charles Tomlinson Griffes (Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan, 1917) and Peter Warlock ('Along the Stream' from Saudades, 1923).