English author, born at Andover, England, on the 3rd of February 1837; began to write at an early age. After editing several provincial newspapers, he was placed in charge of the Gentleman’s Magazine (London); for many years the special correspondent of the New York Times; connected with various of high-class dailies, among them the Standard and Telegraph; wrote several books of note, and biographies on journalists and journalism, but his fame rests on his works of fiction. In 1865 his first novel, Bitter Sweets, a love-story, appeared, and in the following year, Against the Stream. This was followed in 1867 by The Tallants of Barton. His best-known novels are Clytie (translated into German and Swedish); Cruel London; Three Recruits; The Queen of Bohemia; By Order of the Czar (in defense of the Jews persecuted by the Russian autocrat); Princess Mazaroff; Under the Great Seal; The Abbey Murder; and John Needham’s Double (dramatized and acted by E. S. Willard and his company). He also wrote a number of volumes of impressions, anecdotes on celebrities, etc. He dramatized Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter for Richard Mansfield.
