Crosbie Garstin

Born in 1887, Crosbie Garstin grew up in an artistic family in West Cornwall as the eldest son of the painter Norman Garstin. He worked in several creative directions, but he is chiefly remembered as a novelist and poet whose writing was strongly shaped by Cornwall, its coastline, and its history.

Garstin is best known for the Penhale trilogy, a sequence of historical novels set in eighteenth-century Cornwall. These books helped build his reputation as a popular writer, combining local color, action, and a strong sense of place.

His life was relatively short: he died in 1930, reportedly after a boating accident in the Salcombe estuary. Even so, his work remains of interest to readers drawn to Cornish writing, historical adventure, and the literary world that grew out of the artists' communities of the far southwest of England.