Guy Thorne

Born Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull in 1875, this English writer became widely known by the pen name Guy Thorne. He also wrote as C. Ranger Gull and Leonard Cresswell Ingleby, building a busy career in journalism as well as fiction.

His best-known book is When It Was Dark: The Story of A Great Conspiracy (1903), a hugely successful novel that imagines a plot to shake the foundations of Christianity. The book made him famous and helped define his reputation as a writer of bold, high-stakes popular fiction.

Guy Thorne remained a prolific author until his death on January 9, 1923. Today he is remembered as a vivid voice from the Edwardian era, a writer whose work mixed sensation, belief, and page-turning storytelling in ways that captured a wide readership.