Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch) Biography

British novelist, critic, and editor, born in Bodmin, Cornwall, educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he adopted the pseudonym ‘Q’ under which much of his later writing appeared. Dead Man's Rock (1887) was the first of his many adventure novels; others include The Ship of Stars (1899) and Poison Island (1907). His fiction was collected in the thirty volumes of Tales and Romances (1928–9). He became King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge in 1912; On the Art of Writing (1916) and On the Art of Reading (1920) collect his lectures, which tend to promote his beliefs in the uncomplicated enjoyment of literature. He was chiefly responsible for the establishment in 1917 of Cambridge's honours school of English. Among his other works of criticism are the three volumes of Studies in Literature (1918–29). In 1921 publication of his New Cambridge Shakespeare began, which was eventually completed under John Dover Wilson's editorship. His many other works of editorship include The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900). From the 1890s onward his home was at Fowey in Cornwall, of which he became Mayor in 1937. He was knighted in 1910, substantially as a result of his journalistic services to the Liberal Party. Memories and Opinions (1944) is his unfinished autobiography. See also F. Brittain'sArthur Quiller-Couch: A Biographical Study of Q (1947), and Quiller-Couch, a Portrait of Q (1988), by A. L. Rowse.