Shaukat Au Khan Fani was born in Islam Nagar, a small town in Badayun district, Uttar Pradesh. His father, Mohammed Shujaat Au Khan was a police inspector. After doing his B.A, from Bareilly College, Bareilly, Fani studied law at Aligarh, and obtained an LL.B. degree. He practised law at Lucknow, Agra, Bareilly and Aligarti, but with no great success. This is because Fain was temperamentally a poet, least interested in legalistic hair-splitting. Spurred by his poetic instinct, he had started writing verse at the young age of eleven. He wrote his poetry at first under the pen-names of "Shaukat", and later adopted "Fani" as his poetic name. Like many of his illustrious predecessors, Fain also went to Hyderabad where he was patronised by Maharaj Kishan Parshad. He also worked as a headmaster in a government school. Despite all this, Fain had to struggle against financial and physical problems in his later life. He died in Hyderabad in 1941, a sad, lonely man, feeling out of place in the far-off land of Deccan. The following couplet aptly describes his state of alienation:
Fain, I'm a living corpse, untombed, undraped,
Unwelcome in the alien land, exiled from home and hearth.
Fani is exclusively a poet of the ghazal. His poetry is deeply subjective and lyrical. Though his subjects include love, beauty and mystic thought, he is essentially a master of melancholia. His favourite theme is the theme of loss, despair and death, and his favourite tune is a haunting wail of regret and loneliness. In this respect he may be called a descendant of Mir Taqi Mir, but be has a distinctively individual style. His poems are a transcript of his personal life and experiences and his style is modern, urbane and insightful. His poetical works are available under two collections: Baqiaat-e-Fafli1 and Arfaniaat-e-Faafli.