Raymond E. F. Larsson was an American Catholic poet, whose literary career extended from the 1920s into the 1960s. He was born on 24 March 1901 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with the given name Raymond Edward Francis Larson. Later in his life, he added a second "s" to "Larson," and used the nickname "Ellery" and the pen name "Raymond Ellsworth Larsson." He was the eldest child of Emily Rosalie Larson and Louis Peter Larson, a livery operator who emigrated from Denmark to the United States as a child.

Larsson spent his childhood in Green Bay, where he attended East High School. While still a student, he worked for the Green Bay Press-Gazette (1918-1919). At some point in the early 1920s Larsson moved to New York City to pursue a career in letters. Though he traveled quite often, he lived there intermittently from that time until the late 1940s. In 1926 he went to Paris believing that he had secured a position as a correspondent with the New Yorker. The position never materialized, but he remained in Europe for a year and a half. While there, he met Oxford University student George Dangerfield, who would later become editor of Vanity Fair. The two men became close friends and lifelong correspondents. In 1933, a job with the Green Bay Press-Gazette brought Larsson back to Wisconsin, but by 1934 he was travelling again, this time on the West Coast.

During these years, Larsson earned a living by contributing poems and reviews to various publications, including the New York Sun, the New York Herald Tribune, the New Republic, The Bookman, The Commonweal, and Nation. His poems were also published in periodicals such as The Dial, The Criterion, Transition, Augustea, Prairie, and Poetry Magazine. O City, Cities, Larsson's first published book of poetry, was published in 1929. Other published books by Larsson include Wherefore Peace (1932), Weep and Prepare: Selected Poems 1926-1939 (1940), Saints at Prayer (1942) and Book Like a Bow Curved (1961). Larsson, who was inspired by abstract art, was also an avid drawer. In 1947 one of his drawings was published along with one of his poems in The Catholic C.O.

Larsson's career declined after mid-century. In 1949 he was hospitalized for mental illness; he remained in the care of various state institutions for nearly three decades, until being released to a retirement home in 1977. Despite his long-term hospitalization, Larsson continued to write poetry prolifically. His work was only published occasionally during these years, in publications including the University of Notre Dame's The Juggler.

Larsson converted to Catholicism in 1932. He was sponsored in his conversion by his friends from Green Bay, Vincent and William Engels, brothers of Norbert Engels, who was a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. Due to his ties with the Engels family and Notre Dame, Larsson donated various manuscripts and books to the University throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1983 the director of Rare Books and Special Collections, Anton Masin, curated an exhibit of these materials called Raymond Larsson: A Forgotten American Poet. Larsson, who was alive and aware of the recognition he received in 1983, died in 1991 at the age of 90.