Charles Garvice

Born in London on August 24, 1850, Charles Garvice became a remarkably prolific novelist and journalist. He wrote over 150 romance novels and also used the pseudonym Caroline Hart, building a vast readership in Britain, the United States, and in translation.

Garvice specialized in fast-moving, sentimental fiction that connected strongly with popular audiences. His success was enormous for its time: contemporary accounts described him as one of England’s most successful novelists, and his books sold in very large numbers in the years before the First World War.

Although he is less widely remembered today than some of his literary contemporaries, Garvice was a major figure in mass-market fiction and in the world of serialized storytelling. He died on March 1, 1920, leaving behind a body of work that captures the tastes and reading habits of a huge popular audience.