George Griffith

Griffith was born George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones in Plymouth on 20 August 1857.[1] His parents were clergyman George Alfred Jones, who was appointed vicar in Mossley in 1864, and Jeanette Henry Capinster Jones. The family, which also included Griffith's older brother, moved repeatedly during his childhood as a result of his father's career.[2]^: 104

Owing to the family's financial situation, Griffith was homeschooled,[2]^: 104 with his mother teaching him French and his father Latin and Greek.[3] Following the death of his father in January 1872,[2]^: 104[3] he studied at a "private institution" in Southport for little over a year before going to sea as an apprentice. He deserted his ship in Melbourne and was a manual labourer in Australia for a while before using his earnings to travel.[2]^: 104 He would later claim both to have been offered to marry a Polynesian princess[2]^: 104 and to have circumnavigated the globe six times; about the latter, Sam Moskowitz says "The variety of locales for his stories would tend to substantiate this claim."[4] He returned to England at the age of 19.[2]^: 104

Griffith became a schoolmaster for seven years, at places including Worthing College, writing freelance articles and poetry in his spare time. At Bolton he met Elizabeth Brierly and married her in 1887; the same year he gained professional teaching qualification and quit education to become a writer.[2]^: 104 Griffith joined a newspaper in London for a short time where he rose to editor before the newspaper ceased after a lost libel case in which Griffith defended himself. He authored a series of secular pamphlets including Ananias, The Atheist's God: For the Attention of Charles Bradlaugh. After the success of Admiral Philip H. Colomb's The Great War of 1892 (itself a version of the more famous The Battle of Dorking), Griffith, then on the staff of the periodical Pearson's Weekly as a clerk addressing envelopes and mailing labels, submitted a synopsis for a story entitled The Angel of the Revolution. This was serialised by Arthur Pearson in the magazine (with illustrations by Fred T. Jane[5]) and also published as a book in 1893.[2]^: 106 It remains his best and most famous work. Later novels, such as The Gold Finder developed the heroes' romantic interests. He wrote a sequel, serialised as The Syren of the Skies in Pearson's Weekly 1893-1894. It was later published as a novel titled with the name of its main character, Olga Romanoff.

Pearson used Griffith's popularity to support another of his publications, the magazine Short Stories, by serialising Griffith's next novel The Outlaws of the Air (which covered similar themes to his earlier works - "aircraft, anarchists, and heroes who naturally save the world") in it.[2]^: 106 Griffith's next novel was historical romance rather than futurist - Valdar the Oft-Born using the theme of reincarnation which was popular at the time.[2]^: 106

Griffith was not limited to fiction but wrote other material (including detective stories and travel writing) for Pearson. Griffith continued with a "prodigious" output for Pearson despite being overshadowed by other writers such as H G Wells who was also being serialised in Pearson's publications.[2]^{: 107–108} Harris-Fain attributes decline in quality of his work as being "too productive for his own good" ; his health also deteriorated [2]^: 108

Towards the end of his career Griffith was also getting short stories published in the monthly magazines Pall Mall Magazine and Windsor Magazine[2]^: 107

Griffith died of cirrhosis of the liver, caused by alcoholism, in Port Erin on the Isle of Man, at the age of 48, on 4 June 1906.[1][2]^: 108