author
Houghton Townley
A prolific British popular novelist of the late Victorian and Edwardian years, he wrote melodramas, mysteries, and adventure stories that were vivid enough to reach the silent screen. His work also ranged beyond fiction into nature writing, showing a wider curiosity than his thriller titles might suggest.
1 Audiobook
The Scarlet Feather
by Houghton Townley
About the author
Born in Islington, London, in 1866, Houghton Townley was an English writer whose career spanned popular fiction, journalism, and nonfiction. Reliable sources agree that several of his novels, including The Gay Lord Waring, The Bishop's Emeralds, and The Splendid Coward, were adapted for film during the silent era.
Townley is best remembered for fast-moving stories with titles like The Scarlet Feather and The Secret of the Raft, the kind of books that fit comfortably with the taste for suspense and high drama in the early 1900s. He also wrote English Woodlands and Their Story (1910), an illustrated work that points to an interest in the natural world as well as popular storytelling.
He died in Esher, Surrey, on December 8, 1938. While many details of his life are still hard to pin down, the surviving record shows a versatile writer whose fiction found readers in print and new life on screen.