Ernest Percival Rhys (July 17 1859 – May 25 1946) was an English writer, best known for his role as founding editor of the Everyman's Library series of affordable classics. He wrote essays, stories, poetry, novels and plays. He was born in London, and brought up in Carmarthen and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

After working in the coal industry , he was employed doing editorial work on the Camelot Series of 65 reprints and translations from 1886, for five years, while he turned to writing as a profession. He was a founder member in 1890 of the Rhymer's Club in London, and a contributor to The Book of the Rhymers' Club (1893).

In 1906, he persuaded J. M. Dent , the publisher, for whom he was working on The Lyric Poets series, to start out on the ambitious Everyman project, aiming to publish 1000 titles; the idea was to put out ten at a time. The target was eventually reached, ten years after Rhys died.

Works

• The Great Cockney Tragedy (1891)
• A London Rose: and other rhymes (1894)
• Welsh Ballads (1898)
• Lays of the Round Table (1908)
• The new golden treasury of songs and lyrics (1914) editor
• The Leaf-Burners (1918)
• The Growth of Political Liberty (1921)
• Blackhorse Pit (1925) novel
• Everyman Remembers (1931) autobiography
• Rhymes for Everyman (1933) poems
• Letters from Limbo (1936)
• Song of the Sun (1937) poems