British mystery writer Joseph S. Fletcher was born in Halifax, England,
in 1863. He was orphaned at eight months old, and was taken in and
raised by his grandmother, who lived in Yorkshire. At age 18 he moved
to London to get into journalism. He worked on a few newspaper, though
not as a journalist, and eventually turned to freelance writing. From
1890 to 1900 he wrote pieces about the joys and sorrows of country life
for the "Leeds Mercury" newspaper using the alias "Son of the Soil".
His first novel, "When Charles the First Was King", was published in
1902 and garnered him some attention. From then on he wrote
prolifically in all genres--poetry, fiction, history, biography,
theology, romance, comedy, and pretty much everything in between.
In 1918 US President
Woodrow Wilson remarked about how
much he enjoyed Fletcher's mystery novel "The Middle Temple Murder",
and with that endorsement American publisher Alfred Knopf began
publishing some of Fletcher's many detective stories, and achieved wide
popularity in the US.
Fletcher died on January 31, 1933.
