Life
1832-1902; ed. Westminster and Cambridge; served on hospital commisariat in Crimea; journalist in Italian, Abyssinian, Franco-Prussian, and Ashanti wars; issued a long series of adventure stories with strongly pro-Empire didactic impulse, combining manly virtues with an appearance of historical fidelity; Out in the Pampas (1868), his first boys’ book; edited Union Jack 1880-83; also twelve ‘orthodox’ novels; though no more interested in Ireland than elsewhere, he wrote a preface to The Irish Brigade expressing mildly sympathetic feelings towards Home Rule within the wider context of Empire loyalism. IF ODNB OCEL SUTH DUB OCIL
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Ireland in Fiction, ed. Stephen Brown (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), ‘His 86 or more published stories deal with almost all countries and every period of history. All his stories are sane and healthy, and told in the manner that boys love. Their historical side is carefully worked out.’
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References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), gives bio-details: spent some time in Belfast as Purveyor of the Forces; wrote some books of Irish interest, e.g, Friends Though Divided (1883); Orange and Green, a tale of the Boyne & Limerick (1907); In the Irish Brigade (1901).
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