author
F. C. (Francis Charles) Philips
1849–1921
A true Victorian jack-of-all-trades, this prolific writer moved through the worlds of the army, the stage, the law, and journalism before turning out more than forty novels. His career gave his fiction an unusually lively mix of social observation, theatrical flair, and adventure.
1 Audiobook
If Only etc.
by F. C. (Francis Charles) Philips, Sir Augustus Harris
About the author
Born in Brighton in 1849, Francis Charles Philips led the kind of varied life that sounds almost invented. He was an army officer, actor, theatre manager, dramatist, barrister, journalist, short story writer, and novelist, and that wide experience seems to have fed directly into his fiction.
Philips became a notably productive author, writing over forty novels as well as more than a dozen plays. His work belongs to the busy, entertaining world of late Victorian popular fiction, and his background in the theatre helped give his storytelling a strong sense of scene and character.
He died in 1921, leaving behind a large and diverse body of work. For listeners and readers now, part of his appeal is the sense that he knew many different corners of British life firsthand and brought that energy onto the page.