Aubrey Carroll Edwards was born in Oklahoma in 1909 and grew up in southern Colorado, near Trinidad. He earned his A.B. degree from Southwestern College in Winfield, KS in 1933 and his A.M. (1938) and Ph.D (1939) from the University of Iowa. During the Great Depression he spent some time as a social worker, and during World War II he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, teaching bombing and navigation at San Angelo Air Force Base in Texas.

Edwards joined the University of Kansas English faculty in 1947 as an associate professor, following his department head from Oklahoma State University - Stillwater. He was promoted to full professor in 1959 and received emeritus status in 1981.

Edwards' main teaching interests were in Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, but in 1958 he started the scholarly journal Modern Drama. The following year he and his wife traveled through the United Kingdom and continental Europe, and while in England Edwards met with the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (1880-1964). This meeting allowed him to establish a relationship with other members of the Irish theatre scene who could contribute to the journal.

Edwards met his future wife Virgie while at the University of Iowa, where they were both studying Old English. A. Carroll Edwards passed away just before his centennial birthday in 2009.

[Information retrieved from Endacott Society interview transcript with Calder Pickett and Meserve, Walter J., "In Memoriam," in Modern Drama vol. 52 no. 3 (Fall 2009): 259-261.]