Arthur Beverley Baxter

Arthur Beverley Baxter was a Canadian-born journalist, editor, writer, theatre critic, and British politician. After military service during the First World War, he joined the Daily Express and later became its editor-in-chief, overseeing a period of major circulation growth. He subsequently wrote theatre criticism for the London Evening Standard and represented Wood Green, then Southgate, in Parliament. The blower of bubbles belongs to the fiction he published before his long political career. Issued around 1919 and 1920, it gathers five stories, including the title piece, “Petite Simunde,” and “The Airy Prince.” The collection places love, disappointment, adventure, and artistic aspiration against a society altered by war. Baxter later produced novels, plays, journalism, collected criticism, and the autobiography Strange Street. The blower of bubbles shows the early imaginative side of a career better known for Fleet Street leadership, parliamentary service, and informed commentary on British public life.