Jewish poet Hugo Manning. He was not only a poet, but also a short story writer, a translator, and a lecturer on many literary subjects. Born in 1913, his early life is not well documented; however, Manning lived for a time in Vienna immediately before the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938. In Vienna, Manning lived near the home of Sigmund Freud which later led him to dedicate to Anna Freud his Dead Season's Heritage, published in 1942 in Buenos Aires.

During World War II, Manning served as a Lance-Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in North Africa. After being wounded in North Africa in 1944, (injured in a accident and dissable with a limp for life) Manning began a correspondence with Henry Miller that would last for twenty years. In his letters to Manning, Miller urges him to write prose and to say "those things which seem incommunicable." Manning also lived in Cordoba, Argentina, for four years.