British novelist, born in London on the 24th of August 1850. He was privately educated and began writing early, acting as correspondent for various English and American papers. He produced a volume of poems, Eve and Other Verses (1873), and two plays, The Fisherman’s Daughter and A Life’s Mistake. It is, however, as a remarkably prolific novelist that he is best known. His first popular successes were made in America, as a writer of serials. Both there and in Great Britain he wrote literally for the million, reproducing again and again the same types and situations, and had the largest circulation on record, as well as a wide circle of correspondents attracted by his books. When told by a friend that his stories were unlikely to live, he pointed to the readers on the seashore with the apt remark, “They are all reading my latest.” Amongst his long list of novels may be mentioned the following: Just a Girl (1898); In Wolf’s Clothing (1908) and In Cupid’s Chains (1903). He died at Richmond, Surrey, on the 1st of March 1920.
