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Ellen Price was born on 17th January 1814 in Worcester.In 1836 she married Henry Wood, whose career in banking and shipping meant living in Dauphiné, in the South of France, for two decades. During their time there they had four children.Henry's business collapsed and he and Ellen together with their four children returned to England and settled in Upper Norwood near London. Ellen now turned to writing and with her second book ‘East Lynne'enjoyed remarkable popularity. This enabled her to support her family and to maintain a literary career.It was a career in which she would write over 30 novels including ‘Danesbury House', ‘Oswald Cray', ‘Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles', ‘The Channings'and ‘The Shadow of Ashlydyat'. Sadly, her husband, Henry died in 1866.Ellen though continued to strive on. In 1867, she purchased the magazine ‘Argosy', founded two years previously by Alexander Strahan. She was a prolific writer and wrote much of the magazine herself although she had some very respected contributors, amongst them Hesba Stretton and Christina Rossetti. Although she would gradually pare down writing for the magazine she continued to write novel after novel. Such was her talent that for a time she was, in Australia, more popular than Charles Dickens.Apart from novels she was an excellent translator and a writer of short stories. ‘Reality or Delusion?'is a staple of supernatural anthologies to this day.Ellen Wood died of bronchitis on 10th February 1887). He estate was valued at a very considerable £36,000. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. A monument to her in Worcester Cathedral was unveiled in 1916.

Richard Bernard Heldmann was born on 12th October 1857, in St Johns Wood, North London.By his early 20's Heldmann began publishing fiction for the myriad magazine publications that had sprung up and were eager for good well-written content.In October 1882, Heldmann was promoted to co-editor of Union Jack, a popular magazine, but his association with the publication ended suddenly in June 1883. It appears Heldman was prone to issuing forged cheques to finance his lifestyle. In April 1884 He was sentenced to 18 months hard labour.In order to be well away from the scandal and damage this had caused to his reputation Heldmann adopted a pseudonym on his release from jail. Shortly thereafter the name ‘Richard Marsh'began to appear in the literary periodicals. The use of his mother's maiden name as part of it seems both a release and a lifeline.A stroke of very good fortune arrived with his novel The Beetle published in 1897. This would turn out to be his greatest commercial success and added some much-needed gravitas to his literary reputation.Marsh was a prolific writer and wrote almost 80 volumes of fiction as well as many short stories, across many genres from horror and crime to romance and humour.

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton was born on May 25th, 1803 the youngest of three sons. When Edward was four his father died and his mother moved the family to London. As a child he was delicate and neurotic and failed to fit in at any number of boarding schools. However, he was academically and creatively precocious and, as a teenager, he published his first work; Ishmael and Other Poems in 1820. In 1822 he entered university at Cambridge and in 1825 he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse for Sculpture. The following year he received his B.A. degree and printed, for private circulation, the small volume of poems, Weeds and Wild Flowers. During his career he was to be extremely prolific and write across a number of genres; historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, and science fiction as well as poetry. In 1828 his novel, Pelham, brought him an income, as well as a commercial and critical reputation. The books intricate plot and humorous, intimate portrayals kept many a gossip busy trying to pair up public figures with characters in the book. Bulwer-Lytton reached, perhaps, the height of his popularity with the publication of Godolphin (1833), followed by The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834), The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes (1835), and Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1848). In 1841, he started the Monthly Chronicle, a semi-scientific magazine. The Victorian era was filled with many magazines and periodicals all of whom had a great fascination to chronicle and publish the many things that the Empire and Industrial Revolution were discovering, inventing and changing. In 1858 he entered Lord Derby's government as Secretary of State for the Colonies. He took an active interest in the development of the Crown Colony of British Columbia and wrote with great passion to the Royal Engineers upon assigning them their duties there. In 1866 Bulwer-Lytton was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth in the County of Hertford but his passion for politics now somewhat dimmed. Bulwer-Lytton had long suffered with a disease of the ear and for the last two or three years of his life he lived in Torquay nursing his health. An operation to cure his deafness resulted in an abscess forming in his ear which later burst. Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton endured intense pain for a week and died at 2am on January 18th, 1873, in Torquay, just short of his 70th birthday.

F. Anstey was the pseudonym of Thomas Anstey Guthrie who was born in Kensington, London on August 8th, 1856, to Augusta Amherst Austen, an organist and composer, and Thomas Anstey Guthrie., a prosperous military tailor. Anstey was educated at King's College School and then at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Although his education was first rate Anstey could only manage a third-class degree; A Gentlemen's degree as it was euphemistically known. In 1880 he was called to the bar. However this career path rapidly fell away in his desire to become an author. The successful publication of Vice Versa, in 1882, with the premise of a substitution of a father for his schoolboy son, made his name and reputation as a refreshing and original humorist. The following year he published a rather more serious work, The Giant's Robe. Interestingly the story is about a plagiarist and Anstey was, ironically, accused of plagiarism in writing the work. Despite good reviews both he and his public knew that his writing career was to be that of a humorist. In the following years he published prolifically beginning with; The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and Baboo Jabberjee B.A. (1897). Anstey worked not only as a novelist and short story writer but was also a valued member of the staff at the humorous Punch magazine, in which his voces populi and his parodies of a reciter's stock-piece (Burglar Bill) represent perhaps his best work. In 1901, his successful farce, The Man from Blankleys, based on a story that originally appeared in Punch, was first produced on stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London. Anstey had become a writer, and a successful one at that, of many talents. Many more of his stories were made into plays and films over the years. Others were simply taken for the premise alone, usually with no credit to the original author. By the end of the First World War Anstey's original publications had slowed to a crawl and he seemed rather more interested in translating and publishing some works of Moliere. Thomas Anstey Guthrie died of pneumonia on March 10th, 1934 in London. His self-deprecating autobiography, A Long Retrospect, was published in 1936.

F. Anstey was the pseudonym of Thomas Anstey Guthrie who was born in Kensington, London on August 8th, 1856, to Augusta Amherst Austen, an organist and composer, and Thomas Anstey Guthrie., a prosperous military tailor. Anstey was educated at King's College School and then at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Although his education was first rate Anstey could only manage a third-class degree; A Gentlemen's degree as it was euphemistically known. In 1880 he was called to the bar. However this career path rapidly fell away in his desire to become an author. The successful publication of Vice Versa, in 1882, with the premise of a substitution of a father for his schoolboy son, made his name and reputation as a refreshing and original humorist. The following year he published a rather more serious work, The Giant's Robe. Interestingly the story is about a plagiarist and Anstey was, ironically, accused of plagiarism in writing the work. Despite good reviews both he and his public knew that his writing career was to be that of a humorist. In the following years he published prolifically beginning with; The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and Baboo Jabberjee B.A. (1897). Anstey worked not only as a novelist and short story writer but was also a valued member of the staff at the humorous Punch magazine, in which his voces populi and his parodies of a reciter's stock-piece (Burglar Bill) represent perhaps his best work. In 1901, his successful farce, The Man from Blankleys, based on a story that originally appeared in Punch, was first produced on stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London. Anstey had become a writer, and a successful one at that, of many talents. Many more of his stories were made into plays and films over the years. Others were simply taken for the premise alone, usually with no credit to the original author. By the end of the First World War Anstey's original publications had slowed to a crawl and he seemed rather more interested in translating and publishing some works of Moliere. Thomas Anstey Guthrie died of pneumonia on March 10th, 1934 in London. His self-deprecating autobiography, A Long Retrospect, was published in 1936.

Fred Merrick White was born in 1859 in West Bromwich in the Midlands of England to Joseph White and Helen Merrick who had married the previous year. Joseph was a solicitor's managing clerk, who by the time the family moved to Hereford a few years later, had become a solicitor's article clerk. Little is known of White's early years but what is known is that he followed in his father's footsteps and worked as a solicitor's clerk in Hereford. His father by now had also become a solicitor and times seemed quite prosperous for the family. However in the late 1880's something went badly wrong for his father and he was imprisoned. White had by now decided that writing was a more preferable career for him than the law. By 1891 Fred M. White, now 31 years old, was working full-time as a journalist and author, earning enough to support himself and his mother, Helen. By this time Fred's younger brother, Joseph A. White, had left home and working as a glass-blower. In 1892, White married Clara Jane Smith. The wedding took place at King's Norton, Worcestershire, and the couple went on to have two children; Sydney Eric White (1893) and Ormond John White (1895). As the century closed Fred's father had been released from prison and was living as a'retired solicitor', together with Helen, in Worthington in West Sussex. By the time of the 1911 census, Fred M. White, now 52 years old, and his wife Clara were living at Uckfield, a town in the Wealden district of East Sussex. As the ominous shadows of the First World War gathered White had established himself as a popular and extremely prolific author. Indeed whether it was novels or short stories they flowed from his pen with a startling speed and many of them were initially serialized in the popular weekly and monthly magazines. His clever use of science to create imaginative and highly adventurous story lines was a particular talent of his. During the First World War, both of his sons served as junior officers in The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The titanic struggle of the First World War and his sons'war-time experiences in it greatly influenced this phase of his writing. His novel The Seed of Empire (1916), describes early trench warfare in great and gritty detail. He went on to describe how the social changes after the war created many problems for returning soldiers as they attempted to fit back into a now peaceful society. Fred and Clara spent their twilight years in Barnstaple in Devon, an area which also provided the backdrop for his novels The Mystery Of Crocksands, The Riddle Of The Rail, and The Shadow Of The Dead Hand. Fred Merrick White died in Barnstaple in 1935.

Sabine Baring-Gould was born on January 28th, 1834. The family had its own manor house at Lew Trenchard on a three-thousand-acre estate, in Devon, England. His bibliography is immense. 1200 items at a minimum including the hymns ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'and ‘Now the Day Is Over'. The family spent much of his childhood travelling in Europe and he was educated mainly by private tutors although he spent two years King's College School in London and a few months at Warwick Grammar School. Here he contracted a bronchial disease that was to plague him throughout his life. In 1852 he gained entrance to Cambridge University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1857, and then a Master of Arts in 1860 from Clare College, Cambridge. As early as 1853 he had decided to become ordained. In 1864, after his education and several years teaching, he took Holy Orders. He became the curate at Horbury Bridge in West Riding. Here he met Grace Taylor, the daughter of a mill hand, aged fourteen. During the next few years they fell in love. His vicar, John Sharp, arranged for Grace to live with relatives in York to learn middle-class manners. Baring-Gould, meanwhile, relocated to become perpetual curate at Dalton, near Thirsk. He and Grace were married in 1868 at Wakefield. Their marriage lasted until her death 48 years later, and the couple had 15 children. Baring-Gould became the rector of East Mersea in Essex in 1871. In 1872 his father died and he inherited the family estates which included the gift of the living of Lew Trenchard parish. Upon its vacancy in 1881, he took the post, becoming parson as well as squire. He wrote many novels, his usual writing position was whilst standing, including The Broom-Squire set in the Devil's Punch Bowl (1896), Mehalah and Guavas, the Tinner (1897), a collection of ghost stories, and a 16-volume The Lives of the Saints. His studies in folklore resulted in The Book of Were-Wolves (1865), a frequently cited study of lycanthropy. The popular work Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, published in two parts, in 1866 and 1868. Each of the book's twenty-four chapters deals with one medieval superstition, its variants and history. Grace died in 1916. He had carved on her headstone: Dimidium Animae Meae ('Half my Soul'). Sabine Baring-Gould died on January 2nd, 1924 at Lew Trenchard. He was buried next to Grace.