Caine, THOMAS HENRY HALL

Caine, THOMAS HENRY HALL, novelist, was born (of Manx blood on his father's side) at Runcorn in Cheshire, on the 14th May 1853, and was trained as an architect, but gradually passed to journalism (on the Liverpool Mercury) and literature. He published Recollections of his friend Rossetti (1882), Sonnets of Three Centuries (1882), and Cobwebs of Criticism (1883); but is best known by his novels, The Shadow of a Crime (1885), A Son of Hagar (1886), The Deemster (1887), The Bondman (a tale of the old connection between Iceland and Man, 1890), The Seapegoat (a story of Morocco, where he travelled, 1891), The Manxman (1894), and The Christian (1898). The Deemster, named from the official title of the Manx judges, was dramatised as Ben-ny-Chree in 1889; The Manxman in 1895, and The Christian in 1898, first in New York, and the following year in London. A play, Mahomet, was withheld from the stage at the request of the Turkish Ambassador. In 1896 he recited stories in public.