[William Pett]. English author, born at Chartham, near Canterbury, and educated at Marden, Kent, and at the Birkbeck Institute, London. He was for some time a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, and began about 1891 to write humorous sketches for the St. Jamess Gazette and other papers. He secured his first striking success, in volume form, with Mord Emly (1898), an excellent example of his ability to draw humorous portraits of lower-class life. His later books include A Son of the State (1899), A Breaker of Laws (1900), Lost Property (1902), Erb (1903), Mrs. Calers Business (1905), The Wickhamses (1906), &c.