Edwards had worked on his great novel for many years but only completed it towards the end of his life, presenting the typescript to his friend Edward Chaney in August 1974, rather in the manner that the fictional Ebenezer bequeaths his "Book" to Neville Falla in the novel.
Edwards is known for The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, which was published posthumously in 1981. The typescript was rejected by all the publishers it was shown to and only after Edwards" death was it taken up by Hamish Hamilton who arranged for John Fowles to write an introduction. lieutenant was widely and very favorably reviewed, among others by William Golding and Guy Davenport.
Harold Bloom included it in his Western Canon.
Penguin produced a paperback and it was published in American and in French translation. lieutenant has now been published in Italian also by Elliot Edizioni.
lieutenant is currently in print in Britain and America with New York Review of Books in their Classics series. In the late 1920s and "30s Edwards had been regarded as a writer and intellectual of great promise, one who might indeed fill the shoes of Doctorate.H. Lawrence, whose biography Cape commissioned him to write.
He occasionally contributed to Middleton Murry"s Adelphi magazine but never completed his larger projects.
He became an itinerant teacher of drama and, latterly, a minor civil servant and something of a recluse. Towards the end of his life, he became a lodger in a house near Weymouth where he was "discovered" by art student Edward Chaney. The latter encouraged him to complete his novel and eventually got it published.
In September 2008 Chaney and Jane Mosse unveiled Guernsey"s first Blue Plaque on Edwards"s father"s house on the island.
A biography of G.B.Edwards was published in September 2015 by Blue Ormer Publishing.
