BARING, MAURICE. - English writer, b. in London on 27 Apr. 1874, of an aristocratic family, d. 14 Dec. 1945. He was educated at Eton, where he met Arthur Benson, who introduced him to the study of Russian literature. He entered the diplomatic career, which he abandoned in 1903. At the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, he was sent as correspondent of the Morning Post to Moscow, where he remained until 1907. Thereafter he devoted himself entirely to literature. In 1909 he converted to Catholicism: “the only action of my whole life which I am sure I have never regretted,” as he wrote on the subject.
Together with Belloc and Chesterton, he ranks among the most distinguished English Catholic writers. He writes in a highly controlled and refined language, and is an exquisite psychologist. He wrote essays on the history and literature of Russia, poetry, drama, and several novels with a historical-symbolic background and a psychological-religious character, which are perhaps the best of his works. The best known are: Cat's Cradle, Daphne Adeane (1926), and Robert Peckham (1936), the latter being the story of an English refugee who, having left his country after the schism, dies in Rome rather than betray his faith, because, as he wishes to have written on his epitaph, “he could not live far from his homeland.” Two of his novels, The Coat without a Seam (La tunica senza cucitura) and Daphne Adeane, have been translated into Italian.