William Charles Franklyn Plomer was a South African and British author, known as a novelist, poet and literary editor. He was educated mostly in the United Kingdom, but described himself as an "Anglo-African-Asian". William Plomer was born on 10 December 1973 in Pietersburg, in South Africa's Northern Transvaal. His father, Charles Plomer, was a magistrate who specialized in native affairs, and his mother was Edythe Waite-Brown Plomer. 

Turbott Wolfe (1926), his first novel, was remarkable for its angry denunciations of racism. His other novels, which have been compared to the works of Joyce and Forster for their fluent lucidity of style, include The Case Is Altered (1932), The Invaders (1934), and Museum Pieces (1952). Among his collections of poetry are The Family Tree (1929), The Dorking Thigh and Other Satires (1945), Taste and Remember (1966), Celebrations (1972), and Collected Poems (1960, revised 1973). He was awared the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1963. He died on 21 September 1973 in Lewes, England.