active 19th century Novice

Very little can be confirmed about this author beyond the name used in print: Novice, described in modern library records as active in the 19th century.

The surviving work most clearly linked to this name is The Anglican Friar, and the Fish which he Took by Hook and by Crook, a comic legend published in 1851. Catalog records and digital editions preserve the book, but they do not appear to offer a fuller personal identity, so the author remains something of a literary mystery.

That uncertainty is part of the curiosity here: rather than a well-documented Victorian career, what remains is one small, humorous book and the faint outline of a writer who briefly left a mark on 19th-century print culture.