Edwin Lester Arnold

Born in Swanscombe, Kent, on May 14, 1857, he was the son of the poet and journalist Sir Edwin Arnold. He spent much of his childhood in India, later returned to England to study agriculture and ornithology, and became a journalist in 1883.

Before turning fully to fiction, he published nonfiction books including A Holiday in Scandinavia and Bird Life in England. His novels include The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician, Lepidus the Centurion: A Roman of Today, and Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation.

That last book, published in 1905 and later reissued as Gullivar of Mars, became his best-known work. Though it was not a major success at first, it was later recognized as an important early example of planetary romance and is often noted as a possible forerunner to Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars stories. He died on March 1, 1935.