The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants into Britain, John Rodker was born in Manchester on 18 December 1894 and subsequently raised in London from age six. A close friend of David Bomberg and Isaac Rosenberg (known widely as ‘The Whitechapel Boys’), he was schooled and encultured by the East End Jewish community in London, the context of which—politically vibrant, socially and culturally mixed, confrontational and embattled—shaped his literary and personal genius. Writing shortly before, during and after World War I, his work—essays, prose, poetry and translations—appeared in avant-garde and ‘little magazines’ such as The Egoist and New Freewoman, The Dial and The Little Review, and was appreciated and assessed by major figures of canonical modernism such as Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound.