 He wrote for periodicals, including "The Criterion", which was produced by T. S. Eliot.Poetry did not pay, and so in 1923 Manning took a commission from his publisher John Murray to write "The Life of Sir William White", a biography of the man who, as Director of Naval Construction, led the build-up of the Royal Navy in the last years of the nineteenth century.Galton had died in 1921, which not only left Manning effectively homeless, but also lacking a forceful directing influence in his life.