Born in Lethbridge in 1905, he joined the UBC English faculty in 1946. In 1947, he published a leftist study, Canadian Democracy and the Economic Settlement. Upon his retirement he began to write a 11-volume series of futurist, political, comic novels about a James Bond-like global hero which were subsequently self-published in England. Based on the futuristic exploits of a scholarly, musical, American-born, orphaned boxing champion and British noble named Eustace Heskam ("a young Hercules in bed and an Apollo on the concert stage"), Cragg's prophetic cycle predicted, in the early 1980s, that Europe would consolidate and China would eclipse Russia. Cragg's alter-ego ("All over the map in intellectual pursuits and bodily movements") belies Cragg's essentially critical appitudes. He earned three degrees, including a Ph.D in philosophy, and translated Abel Lefranc's 1914 work on the origins of Shakespeare's work, Sous le masque de William Shakespeare.

Novels

The Sheep May Safely Graze (1983)
Brilliant Women (1982, originally published as Not in a Sate of Grace under the pseudonym Ursulla Drummond.)
Caught (1983)
Victory of Moscow (1984)
Talisman (1984)
Snow (1985)
Salvage (1985)
When Woman is Beautiful (1986)
Slippery Ground (1991)
Artful Intimacies (1992)
Bobbing Buoy (1994)
Crush or Crunch (1994)
Facing the Music (1988). (The story of Mildred Larkin.)
Honesh to Gosh! (1990). (Published under the pseudonym Mildred Larkin.)

Nonfiction

Canadian Democracy and the Economy (1947)
Springs of Criticism (1990, revised 1996)
Roaming (1992, essays)
Translation: Under the Mask of William Shakespeare

[BCBW 2003] "Fiction"