H. B. Marriott (Henry Brereton Marriott) Watson

Born in Caulfield, near Melbourne, on 20 December 1863, Henry Brereton Marriott Watson wrote under the name H. B. Marriott Watson. He was an Australian-born writer who built his career in Britain and worked not only as a novelist and short-story writer, but also as a journalist and playwright.

Alongside his fiction, he held editorial and staff roles at major periodicals including the St James's Gazette, Black and White, the Pall Mall Gazette, and W. E. Henley's National Observer. His writing ranged across swashbuckling historical adventures, romances, and darker gothic tales, and he was a notably popular author during his lifetime, publishing dozens of books between the late 1880s and the years before his death.

Today he is often remembered for the energy and color of his historical fiction and for the moody, decadent edge of some of his horror stories. He died in 1921, leaving behind a body of work that captures both the excitement and the shadowy charm of popular fiction at the turn of the twentieth century.