Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) was born in London, the son of the prominent Catholic publishers Sheed & Ward. Raised between London and Philadelphia, educated at Oxford, Sheed eventually moved to New York, where he became an editor and critic at the magazines Jubilee and Commonweal and later a columnist at the New York Times Book Review. A survivor of polio who wrote memoirs of his illness, and of his addictions to drugs and alcohol, he also published nine novels, several essay collections, and books on baseball and jazz.