novelist and short-story writer whose first work to attract attention was The Story of Louie (1913), the last part of a trilogy later published as Whom God Has Sundered, in which he achieved a successful combination of poetry and realism. Of his other novels, the greatest success was perhaps The Story of Ragged Robyn (1945), a tale of 17th-century England. His Poor Man's Tapestry (1946) earned him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Onions was married to the Welsh-born novelist Berta Ruck.