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  The Specification - From their...

  Owen Oliver

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  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, under the pseudonym ‘Owen Oliver’, 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.

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  The Mystery of Edwin Drood

  Charles Dickens

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  The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Charles Dickens's final and most enigmatic novel, left unfinished at the time of his death. Blending elements of mystery, psychological drama, and Gothic suspense, the book stands apart from Dickens's other works and continues to intrigue readers and scholars alike.
  
  Set in the atmospheric cathedral town of Cloisterham, the story revolves around the sudden disappearance of young Edwin Drood. Suspicion soon falls upon his uncle, John Jasper, a respected choirmaster whose outward respectability masks dark inner obsessions. As hidden desires, jealousy, and moral corruption emerge, Dickens carefully constructs a tense and unsettling portrait of a man divided against himself.
  
  Alongside the central mystery, the novel introduces a cast of vivid characters, including the independent and thoughtful Rosa Bud, the mysterious siblings Neville and Helena Landless, and the eccentric investigator Mr. Datchery. Through these figures, Dickens explores themes of identity, guilt, secrecy, and the struggle between conscience and desire.
  
  Though unfinished, The Mystery of Edwin Drood remains a compelling and powerful work. Its unresolved ending invites endless speculation, making readers active participants in solving its central puzzle. Dark in tone yet rich in character and atmosphere, the novel stands as a fascinating final chapter in Dickens's literary legacy and a timeless classic of Victorian mystery.

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  Devereux's Last Smoke - From...

  Izola Forrester

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  The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Izola Forrester.

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  A Capitalist - From their pens...

  George Gissing

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  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.

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  A Legend - From their pens to...

  Alexander Kuprin

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  Alexander Kuprin was born in Narovchat, Penza in Russia on 7th September 1870. 
  At 3 his Father died and he and mother moved to Moscow. By 10 he was enrolled at the Second Moscow Military High School and there his interest in literature began. The Alexander Military Academy followed and two years later he was a sub-lieutenant and posted to an Infantry Regiment for a further four years. 
  Despite his duties he was a now a keen writer and published his first short story at this time. His military duties also garnered him experiences for his breakthrough work ‘The Duel’.  Leaving the military he left for Kiev to work for local newspapers.  He continued to publish both stories and novels and by 1901 he was in St Petersburg becoming part of a group that included Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev.  
  In the years that followed further controversial works and acclaim followed.  His comments on the regime meant he was also put under secret police surveillance.   
  As World War I erupted, Kuprin opened a military hospital but was then given command of an infantry company in Finland. He was soon discharged on grounds of ill health.  
  The October Revolution saw him praise Lenin, but he warned that the Bolsheviks threatened Russian culture and might cause further widespread suffering to the peasants.  As Civil War raged he took his family to Helsinki and then on to Paris. 
  Exile saw his talents decline further and his succumbing to alcoholism. He became lonely and withdrawn. The family's poverty increased his malaise.   
  In May 1937, the Kuprin’s returned to Moscow.  He now saw his work published but wrote almost nothing new.  In 1938 his health rapidly deteriorated.  Already suffering from a kidney problems and sclerosis, he had now developed cancer of the oesophagus.  
  Alexander Kuprin died on 25th August 1938.

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  Those Who Wait - From their pens...

  Ethel Dell

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  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.

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