The Death Guard is the only published novel of the English author Philip George Chadwick (1893 in Batley, Yorkshire – 1955 in Brighton, Sussex). Although the author is virtually unknown to the wider public, his work has received attention from literary scholars. The novel contains many themes later developed by L Ron Hubbard and James Blish. Chadwick was a political thinker with socialist tendencies, a Fabian and subsequently an Independent and a disciple of H.G. Wells.