D. J. Enright was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic. He authored Academic Year (1955), Memoirs Of A Mendicant Professor (1969) and a wide range of essays, reviews, anthologies, children's books and poems. D.J. Enright was born on 11 March 1920 in Leamington, Warwickshire, England. He was educated at Leamington College and Downing College, Cambridge.

Enright spent over twenty years teaching English literature in Egypt, Japan, West Germany, Thailand, and Singapore. Many of his works are informed by his experiences in these countries. Enright's first novel, Academic Year(1955), for example, concerns three expatriate Englishmen in Egypt with thematic emphasis on the conflict between Western and Eastern sensibilities. He has been awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1981. He died on December 31,2002 in London.