author
Frank Barrett
1848–1926
A prolific Victorian storyteller, he wrote dozens of novels filled with adventure, mystery, and high-stakes melodrama. His books were popular with late-19th-century readers and still give a lively taste of the era’s taste for suspense and sensation.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Writing under the name Frank Barrett, Frank Davis was a British novelist active from the 1870s into the early 20th century. Reference sources describe him as a very productive writer, with at least 45 novels to his name, and many of his books were published in the popular circulating-library world of Victorian fiction.
His work ranged across adventure, mystery, sensation fiction, and occasional early speculative ideas. One of the titles most often singled out today is The Justification of Andrew Lebrun (1894), noted by the SFE: Science Fiction Encyclopedia for its suspended-animation theme. Many of his other novels, including The Great Hesper, The Woman of the Iron Bracelets, and Lieutenant Barnabas, show the same taste for danger, reversals, and dramatic storytelling.
Barrett was married to the novelist Rose Davis, who also wrote fiction under the name Joan Barrett. Although he is not as widely known now as some of his contemporaries, his long career and large body of work made him a familiar name to readers of popular British fiction in his day.