Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 September 1864 – 5 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer.
Biography
Barry Odell Pain was born to the working class couple Maria and John Odell Pain on September 28, 1864. Later, the socio-economic circumstance of his birth helped fit him comfortably into the group of "new humour" writers that emerged in the 1890s, none of the other members of which was university educated. Pain was the first author the title of "new humourist" was bestowed upon (or, as he might have said, was shackled with). However, although Barry's father was a linen draper he still was able to send his son to Sedbergh School from 1879 to 1883, where Barry wrote for the school magazine. After Sedbergh, Pain matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 1883, and he won a scholarship there in 1884. Pain left Cambridge in 1886, having earned a third class B.A. in classics, and became a prominent contributor to The Granta.
Upon graduating, Pain served as an “usher” (a secondary school master) at a school in Surrey before resigning in 1888 to become a coach for the army exam at Guildford. Neither job pleased Pain, and while coaching he wrote for the undergraduate magazine The Granta. In 1889, Cornhill Magazine's editor, James Payn, published his story "The Hundred Gates", and in 1890 Pain moved to London where he became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, and joined the staffs of the Daily Chronicle and Black and White. Pain supposedly "owes his discovery to Robert Louis Stevenson, who compares him to De Maupassant". From 1896 to 1928 he was a regular contributor to The Windsor Magazine.
