Canetti was born in Ruse, Bulgaria into Sephardic Jewish family. The family were well-to-do merchants, who spoke old Spanish. When Canetti was six years old, his family moved to Manchester, England. After the sudden death of his father his mother took the family to Vienna, where he learned German.

From 1916 to 1921 Canetti studied in Zürich, and produced his first literary work, JUNIUS BRUTUS, a verse play. During a visit to Berlin in 1928 he met Bertold Brecht, Isaak Babel, and George Grosz, and started to plan a series of novels on the subject of human madness. The idea resulted to novel DIE BLENDUNGEN, (translations into English in 1947 and 1964), which was well received after WW II among others by Thomas Mann and Iris Murdoch, and considered to heve been ahead of its time.

Canetti graduated in 1929 as Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Vienna. He married Veza Taubner-Calderón in 1934 (died 1963). In the 1930s he wrote two plays, DIE HOCHZEIT and DIE KOMÖDIE DER EITELKEIT, forerunners of the theater of absurd. To escape the systematic persecution of Jews Canetti fled to Paris in 1938 and next year he immigrated to England, where he mostly lived for the rest of his life, maintaining also a home in Zurich from the 1970s. In 1971 he married Hera Buschor, who died in 1988.

Canetti's breakthrough work DIE BLENDUNG (Auto da Fe) apperared in 1935, but as a writer he didn't gain much attention before 1960s when the book was reprinted.

As an essayist Canetti gained fame with his The Conscience of Words (1976). With one exeption these essays date from the 1960s and 1970s and deal mostly with literary topics. Canetti sees that writers are responsible of the preservation, revivification, and invention of the lifesustaining myths and their meaning. Tolstoy is rejected as a model for having 'struck a kind of pact with death' in his late turn to religion, and Kafka emerges 'among all writers as the greatest expert on power'.

Among Canetti' several awards were Foreign Book Prize (1949, France), Vienna Prize (1966), Critics Prize (1967, Germany), Great Austrian State Prize (1967), Bavarien Academy of Fine Arts Prize (1969), Bühner Prize (1972), Nelly Sachs Prize (1975), Order of Merit (1979, Germany), Europa Prato Prize (1980, Italy), Hebbel Prize (1980), Kafka Prize (1981), Great Service Cross (1983, Germany). He had also honorary degrees from two universities. Canetti died on August 13, 1994 in Zürich.

NOTE: Irish Murdoch dedicated her novel The Flight From the Enchanter (1956) to Canetti

For further reading: Elias Canetti by Thomas H. Falk (1993); Understanding Elias Canetti by Richard H. Lawson (1991); Elias Canetti by Edgar Piel (1984); Elias Cantti by Dagmar Barnouw (1979); Canetti Lesen, ed. by Herbert G. Göpfert (1975.

Selected works:

• HOCHZEIT, 1932 (play) - The Wedding
• DIE BLENDUNG, 1935 - Auto da Fe/The Tower of Babel
• KOMÖDIE DER EITELKEIT, 1934 - Comedy of Vanity
• MASSE UND MACHT, 1960 - Crowds and Power
• DIE BEFRISTETEN, 1964 - Life-Terms (play, prod. in England in 1956)
• DIE STIMMEN VON MARRAKESCH, 1968 - Marrakesin ääniä
• DER ANDERE PROZESS: KAFKAS BRIEFE AM FELICE, 1969 - Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice
• DIE PROVINZ DES MENSCHEN: AUFZEICHNUNGEN 1942-72, 1973 - The Human Province
• DER OHRENZEUBE: FÜNFZIG CHARAKTERE, 1974 - Earwitness: Fifty Characters
• DIE GERETTETE ZUNGE, 1977 - The Tongue Set Free
• DIE FACKEL IM OHR, 1980 - The Torch in My Ear
• DAS AUGENSPIEL, 1985 - Silmäpeli
• DAS GEHEIMHERZ DER UHR: AUFZEICHNUNGEN 1973-1985, 1987 - The Secret Heart of the Clock
• DIE FLIEGENPEIN, 1992 - The Agony of Flies
• AUFZEICHNUNGEN, 1942-1985, 1993
• NACHTRÄGE AUS HAMPSTEAD, 1994
• WORTMASKEN, 1995