Frank (Frank Mackenzie) Savile

Frank Mackenzie Savile was a British author born in Matlock, Derbyshire, on December 14, 1865, and he died on July 31, 1950. Bibliographic sources also record his fuller legal name as Frank Hope Mackenzie Savile, and note that he sometimes published as Knarf Elivas, his name spelled backward.

He began publishing in the 1890s, first with John Ship, Mariner and then The Foray of the "Hendrik Hudson". His best-known novel, Beyond the Great South Wall (1899), became a notable example of the lost-world adventure, blending Antarctic exploration, buried mysteries, and prehistoric danger in a style that sits halfway between imperial romance and early science fiction.

Savile wrote a range of adventure fiction after that, including The Pursuit, The High Grass Trail, and The River of the Giraffe. Today he is remembered less as a household name than as a fascinating genre writer from the turn of the twentieth century, especially by readers interested in early adventure stories and the roots of science fiction.