Wilfrid Sheed

Sheed was a great-great-grandson of William Ward (cricketer) and of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk and Augusta Mary Minna Catherine Lyons; a great-grandson of William George Ward; a grandson of Wilfrid Philip Ward; a nephew of Father Leo Ward, a missioner in Japan; the son of Maisie Ward and Frank Sheed, the co-founders of Sheed & Ward; and the brother of the translator, Rosemary Sheed. Among Sheed's more remote ancestors was John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk.

He died on 19 January 2011, aged 80, from urosepsis in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Sheed's first novel, A Middle Class Education (1961 ; earlier in the UK), was based on his experiences at Oxford. His biography Frank and Maisie was about his parents' literary establishment and intellectual world. He wrote satirical novels about journalism and memoirs in his later years. His book on American popular music, entitled The House that George Built with a little help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of about Fifty was published in 2008.

He married Maria Bullitt Darlington in 1957 and they had three children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1967. He remarried in 1972 to cookbook author Miriam Ungerer. At his death he was survived by his second wife, three children, a sister, two stepdaughters and four grandchildren.

Sheed was born in London, to Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, prominent Roman Catholic publishers (Sheed & Ward) in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid-20th century. Wilfrid Sheed spent his childhood in both England and the United States before attending Downside School and Lincoln College, Oxford where he earned BA (1954) and MA (1957) degrees.

Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed (27 December 1930 – 19 January 2011) was an English-born American novelist and essayist.