Besant

Besant, SIR WALTER, a well-known novelist, was born at Portsmouth in 1838. He studied at King's College, London, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, and having abandoned his original intention of entering the church, was appointed to a professorship in the Royal College of Mauritius. Ill-health compelling him to resign this post, he returned to England and devoted himself to literature. His first work, Studies in French Poetry, appeared in 1868, and in 1871 he entered into a literary partnership with James Rice. Ready-money Mortiboy, the first of the novels which were the fruits of this conjoint authorship, was published in 1872. It was followed by My Little Girl; With Harp and Crown; This Son of Vulean; The Golden Butterfly (1876), which greatly increased the popularity of its authors; The Monks of Thelema; By Celia's Labour; The Chaplain of the Fleet; and The Seamy Side (1881). After the death of Rice (q.v.), Besant (who was knighted in 1895) wrote All Sorts and Conditions of Men, The Captain's Room, All in a Garden Fair, Dorothy Forster, Children of Gibeon, The World went very well then, Beyond the Dreams of Ararice, The Master Craftsman (1896), &c.; also French Humourists (1873), short books on Rabelais, Coligny, and Whittington, a life of Professor Palmer (1883), and works on London (1892) and Westminster (1895); also DICKENS, JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, and RABELAIS in this work. He shows a first- hand knowledge of very various phases of life, grasp of character, constructive skill, and humour at once shrewd and genial. The distinguishing feature of his novels is the interplay of ingenious fancy and thorough-going, healthy realism. His plots are sometimes as whimsical and charming as a fairy tale, while the setting of each story is worked out with scrupulous fidelity to local colour. In such a book as All Sorts and Conditions of Men, romance and realism are combined with the happiest results. Some of his later novels have been written for the furtherance of social reforms, and one of his schemes, the People's Palace, described in All Sorts and Conditions of Men, has been happily carried into effect in the east end of London. As secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund, he has edited various works on the survey of Palestine; and he was first chairman of the committee of the Incorporated Society of Authors. See the Introduction to the library edition of Ready-money Mortiboy (1887).