The poet, critic and editor J. V. Cunningham was born in Maryland in 1911. After his father died he postponed college until 1931 when he enrolled at Stanford University. He obtained his degree in Classics in 1934 and a doctorate in English in 1945.

He published his first collection of poetry, The Helmsman, in 1942. Other works, including Trivial, Vulgar, and Exalted: Epigrams (1957), The Exclusions of a Rhyme (1960) and Some Salt: Poems and Epigrams (1967) followed this. A Selected Poems and The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham appeared in 1971. Cunningham died in 1985.