Gilbert E. Cannan (1884-1955) was a British novelist and dramatist. In 1897, he was sent to live in Oxford with the economist Edwin Cannan. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and King's College, Cambridge. He started on a legal career, but turned to writing in 1908, after a short spell as an actor. Cannan worked first as a translator, and reviewed in London publications. Many of his novels are in part autobiographical, and fit into a novel sequence the Lawrie Saga, around the character Stephen Lawrie. During World War I he was a pacifist and then conscientious objector. He used his experiences in later novels, making the character Melian Stokes in Pugs and Peacocks (1919) a portrait of Bertrand Russell. His other works include: Peter Homunculus (1909), Devious Ways (1910), Miles Dixon (1910), Little Brother (1912), Round the Corner (1913), Old Mole (1914), Young Earnest (1915), Mendel (1918), Mummery: A Tale of Three Idealists (1918), Time and Eternity (1919), Pink Roses (1919), The Release of the Soul (1920) and Annette and Bennett (1922).