Fred M. (Fred Merrick) White

Fred M. White, born Fred Merrick White in 1859, was a British writer from West Bromwich who published a great many novels and short stories from the late Victorian period into the early 20th century. Sources on his life agree that he first followed his father into the law before turning to writing full time as his magazine fiction found a strong audience.

He wrote across several popular forms, including sensation fiction, crime, adventure, and speculative tales. Many readers now know him best for The Doom of London, a sequence of stories first published in Pearson's Magazine in 1903 and 1904, where London faces a series of large-scale catastrophes. The stories are often noted for their brisk plotting and for how boldly they imagine modern urban disaster.

White remained an active and remarkably productive author well into the 1920s. His work appeared widely in magazines and newspapers as well as in book form, and a large number of his stories survive through public-domain archives, which has helped keep interest in his fiction alive.