Life
Humphry Francis Ellis was born in Metheringham, Lincolnshire. After gaining a Double first in Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1930, Ellis went to Marlborough College to teach. Punch magazine first accepted a submission in 1931, and he left to become a staff writer on the magazine in 1933, the same year he married Barbara Hasseldine. Ellis became Literary and Deputy Editor in 1949, a post which he held until 1953, when he resigned in protest at the appointment of Malcolm Muggeridge as editor. In Punch from November 1938 onwards he developed the character of A. J. Wentworth, inspired by his experience as a schoolmaster, and The Papers of A. J. Wentworth, B.A. were first published in book form in 1949.
Punch magazine continued to publish Ellis's work, but from 1954 he found a more lucrative market in The New Yorker, where the Wentworth stories proved very popular.
He was a rugby football Blue at University, and subsequently played for the town of Richmond and for Kent.
H.F. Ellis died in Taunton in 2000, but not before The Papers of A. J. Wentworth, B.A. were republished by Prion Press.
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