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The great author of Vanity Fair and The Luck Of Barry Lyndon was born in India in 1811. At age 5 his father died and his mother sent him back to England. His education was of the best but he himself seemed unable to apply his talents to a rigorous work ethic. However, once he harnessed his talents the works flowed in novels, articles, short stories, sketches and lectures. Sadly, his personal life was rather more difficult. After a few years of marriage his wife began to suffer from depression and over the years became detached from reality. Thackeray himself suffered from ill health later in his life and the one pursuit that kept him moving forward was that of writing. In his life time, he was placed second only to Dickens. High praise indeed.

George Augustus Sala was born in born in New Street, London, on 24th November 1828.He was a precocious child. Having learnt French he wrote a French tragedy ‘Fredegonde'before he turned 10. From 1839 to 1842 he studied in Paris alongside fellow pupil Alexandre Dumas.At 15, now a capable draughtsman and an insatiable reader, he was allowed to follow his own path.Stints as a clerk were followed by an engagement to draw railway plans during the railway mania of 1845. His mother and brother then introduced him to the Princess's Theatre, where they were professionally engaged, and he was given occasional work as a scene-painter.He began his literary career in 1848 with articles to a struggling weekly paper called ‘Chat.'They were eagerly accepted, and he was appointed editor on a miniscule salary.In 1850 came his first publication; a comic illustrated guidebook for continental tourists; ‘Practical Exposition of J. M. W. Turner's Picture, Hail, Rain, Steam, and Speed.'In 1851 a rather more promising opportunity offered itself. Charles Dickens accepted ‘The Key of the Street,'for his periodical ‘Household Words.'For the next 5 years Sala would write an essay or story every week.Sala published his first novel in 1860, ‘The Baddington Peerage: A Story of the Best and Worst Society'.He was eager to build on the thriving periodical market and followed in the footsteps of Dickens and Thackeray with the founding of ‘Temple Bar.'The first issue was December 1860 and in the second he began a serialization of ‘The Seven Sons of Mammon', followed by perhaps his best work ‘The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous'.In 1863 Sala undertook his first tour as a ‘special'foreign correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph.'He was in America from November 1863 to December 1864, reporting on the progress of the civil war.A long series of expeditions followed across Europe and the United States before Australia and India.During Sala's last years his energies were slowed by frequent illness. While continuing work for the ‘Daily Telegraph'and his ‘Echoes of the Week,'he lived mainly in Brighton.George Augustus Sala died from nervous exhaustion, after a long illness, at Brighton on 8th December 1895.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859. His childhood was blighted by his father's heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing. He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe', was published in Blackwood's Magazine. Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority.When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead'in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa.1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber', although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea. He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife.His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet', the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine. As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty.Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902. The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade.Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean. During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject.On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack. He was 71.

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families. Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication. Her first collection of short stories,'The Troll Garden', was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including'A Wagner Matinee,''The Sculptor's Funeral,'and'Paul's Case.'As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward. By 1912 she had finished her first novel'Alexander's Bridge'which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews. Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy:'O Pioneers!'(1913),'The Song of the Lark'(1915), and'My Ántonia'(1918). All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel'One of Ours'. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained. In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories,'Obscure Destinies'which contained the highly regarded'Neighbour Rosicky.'She now began work on'Lucy Gayheart', a novel that was rather darker than those before it. With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families. Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication. Her first collection of short stories,'The Troll Garden', was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including'A Wagner Matinee,''The Sculptor's Funeral,'and'Paul's Case.'As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward. By 1912 she had finished her first novel'Alexander's Bridge'which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews. Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy:'O Pioneers!'(1913),'The Song of the Lark'(1915), and'My Ántonia'(1918). All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel'One of Ours'. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained. In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories,'Obscure Destinies'which contained the highly regarded'Neighbour Rosicky.'She now began work on'Lucy Gayheart', a novel that was rather darker than those before it. With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families. Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication. Her first collection of short stories,'The Troll Garden', was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including'A Wagner Matinee,''The Sculptor's Funeral,'and'Paul's Case.'As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward. By 1912 she had finished her first novel'Alexander's Bridge'which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews. Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy:'O Pioneers!'(1913),'The Song of the Lark'(1915), and'My Ántonia'(1918). All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel'One of Ours'. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained. In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories,'Obscure Destinies'which contained the highly regarded'Neighbour Rosicky.'She now began work on'Lucy Gayheart', a novel that was rather darker than those before it. With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

Evelyn May Clowes was born on 7th May 1872 in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds. She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design.In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, the owner of a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found life difficult and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went by herself to Australia, arriving in June 1902 and gave birth to a son a few months later. She lived in Melbourne for about eight years. To earn a living she took on a wide and varied range of jobs; she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did other artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was readily put to use in her literary works.Her first book, ‘The Garden of Contentment', was published in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. It was the first of many works that covered fiction, short stories, travel and autobiography.She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1st July 1915 and gained a further reputation as a writer of short stories for magazines which display both her humour and sense of tragedy. Travel was always high on her priority and the experiences used not only for pleasure but in her writings and, as travel books, ideas in themselves. On 27th January 1933 at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, she married a retired barrister from Gloucestershire. In her own words, the marriage ‘ended in tragedy.'Elinor Mordaunt died on 25th June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 70.

Jacques Heath Futrelle was born on the 9th April 1875 in Pike County, Georgia.His early career was as a journalist. Initially he worked for the Atlanta Journal where he began their sports section. This was followed by work for the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American. At the latter, in 1905, he published the serialized version of his short story ‘The Problem of Cell 13'who's main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, commonly known as ‘The Thinking Machine', a detective, who used logic to solve crimes.In 1895 he married Lily May Peel with whom he had two children.In 1906 buoyed by the success of his short stories he left the paper to write novels. Such was his success that he had a house, ‘Stepping Stones', designed and built with a harbor view at Scituate, Massachusetts, where the family would spend most of their time together.On April 15th, 1912 he was returning from Europe as a first-class passenger aboard the Titanic when it stuck an iceberg. He refused to board a lifeboat but insisted that Lily did. She acquiesced and remembered the last she saw of him he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. His body was never recovered.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was in, estimating that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past. Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother's pension with whom she now lived.Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata', a short novel published in 1928.Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.However, Dorothy's life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read:'I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.'Index of ContentsA Country House, A Garland of Earth, Mutiny, Rhapsody, The Problem of Life

Zona Gale was born on 26th August 1874 in Portage, Wisconsin. She was exceptionally close to her parents and later used them as the basis for characters in her works. She wrote and illustrated her first story at the age of 7.By 16 she was being paid for stories from the Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin. After studies at the University of Wisconsin, where she received a degree and two masters she moved to New York and applied for jobs at every paper in the city. She was later hired as a secretary to Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, critic, essayist, banker, and scientist. and immersed herself in his literary circle.Gale returned to her hometown in 1903 and saw that her old world was full of new possibilities. She now dedicated herself to full-time writing.Her first novel ‘Romance Island'was published in 1906 and she also began the popular ‘Friendship Village'series of stories. In 1920 came ‘Miss Lulu Bett', which depicts life in the Mid-West. Adapted into a play it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921. It was a stellar achievement.After the deaths of her parents her works, both fiction and non-fiction, drifted towards mysticism and her belief that problems could be solved through a kind of transcendentalist enlightenment.Gale was a suffragist, an activist, and a liberal Democrat as well as an active member of the National Woman's Party and pacifist. Much of her time was taken up with advancing opportunities for women both at school and as writers. It was a problem she repeatedly emphasized in her novels: women's frustration at their lack of opportunities.'In the mid 20's she began caring for a girl, a relative, Leslyn, and later adopted her. At age 54, she married William L Breese, a childhood friend and a widower. He was a wealthy banker and hosiery manufacturer. She also became a step mother to his daughter, Juliette. In mid-December 1938 she went to Chicago for medical treatment and contracted pneumonia a few days later. Zona Gale died of pneumonia in Passavant Hospital in Chicago on 27th December 1938.

Evelyn May Clowes was born on 7th May 1872 in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds. She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design.In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, the owner of a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found life difficult and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went by herself to Australia, arriving in June 1902 and gave birth to a son a few months later. She lived in Melbourne for about eight years. To earn a living she took on a wide and varied range of jobs; she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did other artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was readily put to use in her literary works.Her first book, ‘The Garden of Contentment', was published in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. It was the first of many works that covered fiction, short stories, travel and autobiography.She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1st July 1915 and gained a further reputation as a writer of short stories for magazines which display both her humour and sense of tragedy. Travel was always high on her priority and the experiences used not only for pleasure but in her writings and, as travel books, ideas in themselves. On 27 January 1933 at Tenerife, Canary Islands, she married a retired barrister from Gloucestershire. In her own words, the marriage ‘ended in tragedy.'Elinor Mordaunt died on 25th June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 70.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon's whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.

Richard Thomas Gallienne was born in Liverpool on 20th January, 1866.His first job was in an accountant's office, but this was quickly abandoned to pursue his first love as a professional writer. His first work, My Ladies'Sonnets, was published in 1887.In 1889 he became, for a brief time, literary secretary to Wilson Barrett the manager, actor, and playwright. Barrett enjoyed immense success with the staging of melodramas, which would later reach a peak with the historical tragedy The Sign of the Cross (1895).Le Gallienne joined the staff of The Star newspaper in 1891, and also wrote for various other papers under the pseudonym ‘Logroller'. He contributed to the short-lived but influential quarterly periodical The Yellow Book, published between 1894 and 1897.His first wife, Mildred Lee, died in 1894 leaving their daughter, Hesper, in his care.In 1897 he married the Danish journalist Julie Norregard. However, the marriage would not be a success. She left him in 1903 and took their daughter Eva to live in Paris. They were eventually divorced in June 1911.Le Gallienne now moved to the United States and became resident there.On 27th October 1911, he married Mrs. Irma Perry, whose marriage to her first cousin, the painter and sculptor Roland Hinton Perry, had been dissolved in 1904. Le Gallienne and Irma had known each other for many years and had written an article together a few years earlier in 1906.Le Gallienne and Irma lived in Paris from the late 1920s, where Irma's daughter Gwen was by then an established figure in the expatriate bohème. Le Gallienne also added a regular newspaper column to the frequent publication of his poems, essays and other articles.By 1930 Le Gallienne's book publishing career had virtually ceased. During the latter years of that decade Le Gallienne lived in Menton on the French Riviera and, during the war years, in nearby Monaco. His house was commandeered by German troops and his handsome library was nearly sent back to Germany as bounty. Le Gallienne managed a successful appeal to a German officer in Monaco which allowed him to return to Menton to collect his books.To his credit Le Gallienne refused to write propaganda for the local German and Italian authorities, and financially was often in dire need. On one occasion he collapsed in the street due to hunger.Richard Thomas Gallienne died on 15th September 1947. He is buried in Menton in a grave whose lease is, at present, due to expire in 2023.

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon's whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.The Short Stories of Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon's whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'. He is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and of course the novels and other works that have seen him acknowledged as a writer of the first rank.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'. He is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and of course the novels and other works that have seen him acknowledged as a writer of the first rank.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'. He is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and of course the novels and other works that have seen him acknowledged as a writer of the first rank.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'. He is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and of course the novels and other works that have seen him acknowledged as a writer of the first rank.

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon's whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.C.E. Montague – An IntroductionCharles Edward Montague was born in London on New Year's Day, 1867 and educated at the City of London School and then Balliol College, Oxford.At university, Montague, a keen writer, wrote several literary reviews for the Manchester Guardian and was then invited for a month's trial and, after impressing, to work there.Montague and the editor, C. P. Scott shared the same political views and between them they turned the Manchester Guardian into a vibrant and campaigning newspaper. They were for Irish Home Rule and against both the Boer War and the First World War.After the war had begun. Montague believed that it was important to give full and unequivocal support to the British government. Despite his age, 47, he was determined to serve.Montague was soon promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and with it a transfer to Military Intelligence. The war also brought about a crisis in his faith and it was suitably resolved by Montague temporarily putting it to one side and carrying on with the fighting.In November 1918 the war was over and Montague could now return home to his wife and family and also to the Manchester Guardian where he would continue to work until retirement in 1925.For Montague the war had been corrosive but it had given him much to write about both for the paper and also for his books which he now hoped to also spend more time on. Among those to flow from his pen are the novels A Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice as well as collections of short stories, other essays and a travel book.He finally retired in 1925, and settled down to become a full-time writer in the last years of his life.Charles Edward Montague died in Manchester on 28th May, 1928 at the age of 61.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook.By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press.In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook.By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press.In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook.By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press.In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook.By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press.In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did. By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did. By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did. By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did. By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook.By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur.In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time.By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press.In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts.Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers'and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was estimated that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Charles Edward Montague was born in London on New Year's Day, 1867 and educated at the City of London School and then Balliol College, Oxford. At university, Montague, a keen writer, wrote several literary reviews for the Manchester Guardian and was then invited for a month's trial and, after impressing, to work there. Montague and the editor, C. P. Scott shared the same political views and between them they turned the Manchester Guardian into a vibrant and campaigning newspaper. They were for Irish Home Rule and against the Boer War and the First World War. But now that the war had begun. Montague believed that it was important to give full and unequivocal support to the British government. Despite his age, 47, he was determined to serve. Montague was soon promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and with it a transfer to Military Intelligence. The war also brought about a crisis in his faith and it was resolved by Montague temporarily putting it to one side and carrying on with the fighting. In November 1918 the war was over and Montague could now return home to his wife and family and also to the Manchester Guardian where he would continue to work until retirement in 1925. For Montague the war had been corrosive but it had given him much to write about both for the paper but also for his books which he now hoped to also spend more time on. Among those to flow from his pen are the novels A Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice as well as collections of short stories, other essays and a travel book. He finally retired in 1925, and settled down to become a full-time writer in the last years of his life. Charles Edward Montague died in Manchester on May 28th, 1928 at the age of 61.

Charles Edward Montague was born in London on New Year's Day, 1867 and educated at the City of London School and then Balliol College, Oxford. At university, Montague, a keen writer, wrote several literary reviews for the Manchester Guardian and was then invited for a month's trial and, after impressing, to work there. Montague and the editor, C. P. Scott shared the same political views and between them they turned the Manchester Guardian into a vibrant and campaigning newspaper. They were for Irish Home Rule and against the Boer War and the First World War. But now that the war had begun. Montague believed that it was important to give full and unequivocal support to the British government. Despite his age, 47, he was determined to serve. Montague was soon promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and with it a transfer to Military Intelligence. The war also brought about a crisis in his faith and it was resolved by Montague temporarily putting it to one side and carrying on with the fighting. In November 1918 the war was over and Montague could now return home to his wife and family and also to the Manchester Guardian where he would continue to work until retirement in 1925. For Montague the war had been corrosive but it had given him much to write about both for the paper but also for his books which he now hoped to also spend more time on. Among those to flow from his pen are the novels A Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice as well as collections of short stories, other essays and a travel book. He finally retired in 1925, and settled down to become a full-time writer in the last years of his life. Charles Edward Montague died in Manchester on May 28th, 1928 at the age of 61.

Ethel May Dell was born on 2nd August 1881, in the London borough of Streatham, England to a middle class and comfortably off family.She wrote short stories from an early age, mainly romance themed and located in various parts of the British Empire buy more usually India. For their time they were considered to be rather racy.Her first novel, which she worked on for many years, was constantly rejected by publishers until when finally released in 1911 as ‘The Way of An Eagle'was a huge success and went through 30 reprints.Further works followed, all loved by her audience and generally panned by her critics, but it didn't seem to upset her in the slightest. Her income kept all criticisms and enquiries at bay.In 1922 she married Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Tahourdin Savage. He resigned his commission, devoted himself to her well-being and kept all outside interest away from his very shy and private wife.Across her career she wrote some thirty novels and many short stories in magazines and periodicals which were later collected and published in their own volumes.Ethel May Dell Savage died of cancer on 17th September 1939. She was 58.

Ethel May Dell was born on 2nd August 1881, in the London borough of Streatham, England to a middle class and comfortably off family.She wrote short stories from an early age, mainly romance themed and located in various parts of the British Empire buy more usually India. For their time they were considered to be rather racy.Her first novel, which she worked on for many years, was constantly rejected by publishers until when finally released in 1911 as ‘The Way of An Eagle'was a huge success and went through 30 reprints.Further works followed, all loved by her audience and generally panned by her critics, but it didn't seem to upset her in the slightest. Her income kept all criticisms and enquiries at bay.In 1922 she married Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Tahourdin Savage. He resigned his commission, devoted himself to her well-being and kept all outside interest away from his very shy and private wife.Across her career she wrote some thirty novels and many short stories in magazines and periodicals which were later collected and published in their own volumes.Ethel May Dell Savage died of cancer on 17th September 1939. She was 58.

Ethel May Dell was born on 2nd August 1881, in the London borough of Streatham, England to a middle class and comfortably off family.She wrote short stories from an early age, mainly romance themed and located in various parts of the British Empire buy more usually India. For their time they were considered to be rather racy.Her first novel, which she worked on for many years, was constantly rejected by publishers until when finally released in 1911 as ‘The Way of An Eagle'was a huge success and went through 30 reprints.Further works followed, all loved by her audience and generally panned by her critics, but it didn't seem to upset her in the slightest. Her income kept all criticisms and enquiries at bay.In 1922 she married Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Tahourdin Savage. He resigned his commission, devoted himself to her well-being and kept all outside interest away from his very shy and private wife.Across her career she wrote some thirty novels and many short stories in magazines and periodicals which were later collected and published in their own volumes.Ethel May Dell Savage died of cancer on 17th September 1939. She was 58.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on the 30th August 1797 in Somers Town, London.Her mother, the famous feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft died when Mary was only 11 days old and she was raised by her father, the philosopher, novelist, journalist, and perpetually in debt, William Godwin.Though Mary received little formal education her father taught her a broad range of subjects and added to her bright and curious personality she easily absorbed a good and broad education.In July 1814, after conducting a secret affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had earlier promised to pay off yet another round of her father's business debts, the pair eloped to France. Within two months, penniless and pregnant they returned to England.Her husbands'affairs caused her frequent heartbreak but despite all the travails, including the loss of her own child, Shelley's recent inheritance gave them the opportunity to journey again to Europe.It was here that ‘Frankenstein'was born and established Mary's own name in literature.Her life hereafter was plagued with loss; the death of two further children and then her husband in a boating accident. Her writing continued through novels, travel pieces and biographies. Her short stories, some based in Europe, tackle difficult situations and genres as well the obstacles that women were burdened with in society. Her editorship of her late husband's poetry was also widely praised. Mary's radical politics continued to guide her journey throughout her life but, by 1840, illness had begun to haunt her years, depriving her of energy and vigour. Mary Shelley died on the 1st February 1851, at Chester Square, London of a suspected brain tumour. She was 53.

Joshua Albert Flynn was born in Sheerness, Kent, on 15th September 1863. He was educated at private schools and later graduated from King's College, London. His initial career was with the Civil Service where he thrived. A marriage to Ada Parkinson brought two sons and three daughters into their lives. He worked in South Africa as a financial adviser to Lord Kitchener before stints at the Admiralty and the War Office. In 1916 he was appointed director-general of finance at the Ministry of Pensions. His stellar professional career brought him a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1910 and a knighthood in 1919. His career in literature started late and is almost forgotten today. Although he wrote a handful of novels, he was well regarded as the author of short stories for children. But amongst the 250 stories he wrote and published in the leading periodicals and the magazines of the day his ambitions spread much wider. He was able to write across a number of genres. His humourous stories received particular praise as did his many science fiction stories, where undoubtedly his time in Government helped bring across a particular way of imparting information into the structure of narratives as normal everyday folk came up against terrifying and dystopian happenings.Owen Oliver, died in Streatham, south London on 8th October 1933. He was 70.

Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born on 2nd September 1877 at Devon Lodge in Grassendale Park, Garston, Liverpool.At 16, the family moved to Cheltenham, where she attended Cheltenham Ladies'College and then on to St Hilda's College, Oxford to read history, where she was one of the first female students, although at this time women were not awarded degrees.Broster served as secretary to Charles Harding Firth, a Professor of History for several years, and collaborated on several of his works. Her first two novels were co-written with a college friend, Gertrude Winifred Taylor.With the Great War interrupting her literary ambitions she served as a Red Cross nurse at a Franco-American hospital, but returned to England with a knee infection in 1916. After the war, she moved near to Battle in East Sussex and took up writing full-time. In 1920 she at last received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Oxford.Her novels, mainly historical fiction, peaked in popularity with ‘The Flight of the Heron', in 1925, a best-seller followed up by two sequels.As well as poetry and various articles she also wrote several short stories, the best known of which is a classic of weird fiction ‘The Couching at the Door'in which an artist appears to be haunted by a mysterious entity.An intensely private individual many readers deduced from her name that she was both a man and Scottish.D K Broster died in Bexhill Hospital on 7th February 1950. She was 73.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is among the greatest American masters of fantasy and the supernatural. Born in 1890, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, his health was uncertain from childhood and he led a sheltered early life. His semi-invalidism enabled him to read omnivorously, and as a shy imaginative child he began to invent what would in his adult life become a whole macabre fantastic world of his own, peopled by creatures out of his own weird imagination. As an adult he was retiring, almost a recluse. Tall, thin and pale, but with bright alert eyes, he was much given to wandering his native city in the dark hours of the night, and he became a devoted student of its antiquities. Although he began to write early he had nothing published until he was in his twenties. He set many of his stories around the imaginary town of Arkham, and invented an entire mythology of his own, its core being the demoniac cult of Cthulhu, based on the lore or legend that the world was at one time inhabited by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold or were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.Since his early death in 1937 his stories have continued to attract attention and praise from an ever-growing audience.

Louisa MacDonald was born in 1845, one of eleven children of part Scottish descent. Together with three of her sisters they were known as the ‘MacDonald sisters'primarily because of their marriages to well-known men. In 1866 she married the wealthy industrialist Alfred Baldwin in a double wedding with her sister Anne. After giving birth to Stanley on the 3rd August 1867, who would go on to become Prime Minister, she drifted into an unhappy life in her then residence in Worcestershire. She had at least one miscarriage and days alone depressed and in darkness.During the 1870's the couple travelled to find a lasting cure and tried a variety of treatments which led to her recovery in 1883. She now became a leading figure in her local village of Wilden, near Stourbridge.Her writing career of novels, short stories and poetry is often overlooked, as was the case with so many women, yet her works reveal many talents and a gift for melding odd and weird circumstances into seemingly everyday life. Louisa Baldwin died in 1925.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan. He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe. His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education. His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut short by lack of money and he enlisted as a private in the army claiming he was 22, it is more probable he was 18. After 2 years he obtained a discharge in order to take up an appointment at the military academy, West Point, where he failed to become an officer.Poe had released his 1st poetry volume in 1827 and after his 3rd turned to prose and placing short stories in several magazines and journals. At age 26 he obtained a licence to marry his cousin. She was a mere 13 but they stayed together until her death from tuberculosis 11 years after.In January 1845 ‘The Raven'was published and became an instant classic. Thereafter followed the prose works for which he is now so rightly famed as a master of the mysterious and the macabre.Edgar Allan Poe died at the tragically early age of 40 on 7th October 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as ‘congestion of the brain'or ‘cerebral inflammation', common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism but the actual cause of death remains a mystery.

Bithia Mary Sheppard was born in Kilgefin, County Roscommon, Ireland, the only daughter of an Anglican Church of Ireland rector. She was educated at Rockferry, Cheshire and in Tours, France. Her initial fame rested as a horsewoman with the Kildare Hunt. In 1871, she married John Stokes Croker, an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and later the Royal Munster Fusiliers.In 1877, the couple moved to Madras and then Bengal. They would spend 14 years in India.Bithia only began writing at the age of 33 and in her life wrote 42 novels and 7 volumes of short stories. Within her short story creations are much anthologized ghost, supernatural and macabre tales. Many of her novels reveal a side of Empire that is undeniably of its time and a fine example of both talent and observation.After her husband's retirement at the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1892, the couple moved to County Wicklow, then London, and finally Folkestone, where her husband died in 1911.Bithia Mary Croker died at 30 Dorset Square, London, on 20th October 1920.

Joseph Smith Fletcher was born on the 7th February 1863 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. At 8 months of age his clergyman father died and thereafter he was brought up by his grandmother on a farm near Pontefract.After an education at Silcoates school in

Stella Benson was born on the 6th January 1892 in Easthope, Shropshire to parents who were landed gentry.Her early years involved frequent household moves which was difficult for the child as she suffered from ill-health. Some of her early educatio

Stella Benson was born on the 6th January 1892 in Easthope, Shropshire to parents who were landed gentry.Her early years involved frequent household moves which was difficult for the child as she suffered from ill-health. Some of her early educatio

Stella Benson was born on the 6th January 1892 in Easthope, Shropshire to parents who were landed gentry.Her early years involved frequent household moves which was difficult for the child as she suffered from ill-health. Some of her early educatio

Stella Benson was born on the 6th January 1892 in Easthope, Shropshire to parents who were landed gentry.Her early years involved frequent household moves which was difficult for the child as she suffered from ill-health. Some of her early educatio