Ernest Rhys was a writer and literary editor. He founded and edited the Everyman’s Library for J. M. Dent & Sons. He was also a poet and one of the founding members of the ‘Rhymers’ Club’ in London in 1890.
In 1912 or 1913, he went to see a play written by Rabindranath Tagore at the Little Theatre at the Albert Hall, having been given the ticket by a young Bengali student in London. It was there in the audience that he first saw Tagore. Tagore then became a regular visitor to Rhys’ home in Hampstead and became friends with Ernest and his wife, Grace. In 1913, Rhys helped Tagore revise Sadhana for publication and in 1936 he anonymously edited Tagore’s Collected Poems and Plays. Rhys wrote a biography of Tagore for Macmillan in 1915.