E. Way (Ernest Way) Elkington

Born in 1872, Ernest Way Elkington wrote under the name E. Way Elkington and published travel and adventure books in the early 1900s. Surviving library and book records connect him with titles including Adrift in New Zealand, Canada, and The Savage South Seas, which helped build his reputation as a writer of energetic, wide-ranging travel narrative.

Some sources suggest his role in The Savage South Seas was more complicated than the title page implies: the Royal Anthropological Institute's History Wiki says Elkington may have acted as a writer shaping Norman Hardy's experiences into book form rather than serving as the sole original observer. That uncertainty is part of what makes him interesting today, because his books sit at the crossroads of travel writing, publishing, and collaboration.

He died in 1935. While not as widely remembered as some of his contemporaries, his books still circulate through libraries, archives, and public-domain collections, where they offer a vivid snapshot of how distant places were described to English-language readers in the early twentieth century.