Arthur Kitson

Born in Leeds in 1848, Arthur Octavius Kitson was a British writer and biographer whose name is most often linked with The Life of Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator. That book helped preserve Cook’s story for a wide general audience and remains the work he is most clearly remembered for.

Kitson’s interests seem to have reached well beyond biography. Surviving records connect him with writing on political and economic questions as well, suggesting a restless, argumentative mind drawn to public issues as much as to historical subjects.

He died in 1915. Although he is not widely known today, his writing on Cook gave him a lasting place among the many authors who helped shape popular understanding of great voyages and explorers.