Career

Barringer was a Quaker, born in Yorkshire, England. He served in an ambulance unit during World War I, was wounded in action in France and returned to the United Kingdom in 1917. After the war he worked at various times as a civil servant (Senior Information Officer with the Central Office of Information) and as an editor for Scottish publishers Thomas Nelson & Sons, for the British Broadcasting Corporation as an editor on the Radio Times, and in Amalgamated Press as an editor in their encyclopedia department.

Barringer was obscure as an author during his own lifetime.

After his death, however, his fantasies were rediscovered and critically praised by later fantasy authors such as L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, leading to revived interest in them. As a result, a number of reprints appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, most notably as volumes 7, 9 and 13 of the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library in 1976-1977.

To date there has been no comparable revival of Barringer"s other works. All of Barringer"s books are now out of print, although the volumes of the Neustrian Cycle are available as e-books