E. Douglas (Edward Douglas) Fawcett

Born in Hove on April 11, 1866, Edward Douglas Fawcett was the elder brother of the explorer Percy Fawcett. He was educated at Newton Abbot College and Westminster School, and went on to build an unusually wide-ranging life as a novelist, philosopher, and climber.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, he became involved with Theosophy and converted to Buddhism while in Ceylon, later writing for The Theosophist and assisting Helena Blavatsky with research. As an author, he published the fantasy and science-fiction novel Hartmann the Anarchist in 1893, followed by other adventure fiction and a number of philosophical works. His ideas shifted over time, but he remained deeply interested in imagination, reality, and the structure of the universe.

Fawcett spent many years living mainly in Switzerland with his first wife, Mary Blanche Violet Jackson, and devoted much of his life to mountaineering as well as writing. He died in London on April 14, 1960, leaving behind a body of work that combines fin-de-siècle adventure, speculative imagination, and serious philosophical ambition.