Edward Verrall Lucas was an English humorist, essayist, playwright, biographer, publisher, poet, novelist, short story writer and editor. Lucas began work at the age of sixteen, apprenticed to a bookseller. After that he turned to journalism, and worked on a local paper in Brighton and then on a London evening paper. He joined the staff of the humorous magazine Punch in 1904, and remained there for the rest of his life. He introduced his Punch colleague A. A. Milne to the illustrator E. H. Shepard with whom Milne collaborated on two collections of verse and the two Winnie-the-Pooh books.