Born in Dacre, Yorkshire, England, Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual and writer and the editor of The New Age magazine. The son of a schoolmaster, Orage too was a schoolmaster, starting his teaching career at Leeds Board School at the age of twenty one. It was in Leeds that he joined the Fabian Society. After meeting Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) in 1900, the pair founded the Leeds Arts Club (1903) with the aim of furthering avant-garde ideas and philosophy.