John Meade Falkner

Born in Wiltshire in 1858, John Meade Falkner was an English novelist and poet whose reputation rests above all on Moonfleet (1898). He also wrote The Lost Stradivarius and The Nebuly Coat, and his fiction is still remembered for its eerie atmosphere, careful historical detail, and memorable settings.

His life outside literature was just as striking. Falkner studied at Oxford and went on to build a successful career in industry, eventually becoming chairman of Armstrong Whitworth during the First World War. Alongside that work, he kept up deep interests in history, manuscripts, and church antiquities, especially in Durham.

That mix of imagination, scholarship, and practical experience gives his writing a distinctive feel: adventurous and readable, but also thoughtful and richly textured. Though he wrote only a small number of novels, they secured him a lasting place in English fiction.