Matthew Phipps Shiel (21 July 1865 – 17 February 1947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name.
He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.
Matthew Phipps Shiel, (original...
More
Matthew Phipps Shiel (21 July 1865 – 17 February 1947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name.
He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.
Matthew Phipps Shiel, (originally spelled Shiell), was born on the island of Montserrat in the West Indies. His mother, Priscilla Ann Blake, was most likely the daughter of freed slaves, while his father, Matthew Dowdy Shiell, was most likely the illegitimate child of an Irish Customs Officer and a slave woman. Shiell was educated at Harrison College in Barbados.
Shiell moved to England in 1885, eventually adopting Shiel as his pen name. After working as a teacher and translator he broke into the fiction market with a series of short stories published in The Strand and...
Less
