M. P. (Matthew Phipps) Shiel

Matthew Phipps Shiell, who wrote under the name M. P. Shiel, was born in Montserrat in 1865 and moved to London in the 1880s. He studied medicine for a time, worked as a teacher, and began publishing fiction and journalism in the 1890s. At fifteen, he was ceremonially crowned by his father as the self-styled king of Redonda, a colorful detail that became part of his enduring legend.

Shiel’s first major success was Prince Zaleski (1895), a collection featuring an eccentric, intellectual detective. He went on to write more than thirty books across mystery, adventure, horror, and science fiction, including The Yellow Danger, The Lord of the Sea, and The Purple Cloud (1901). The latter, about a lone survivor of a worldwide catastrophe, remains his most widely reprinted and influential work. He died in West Sussex in 1947.