Michael Sadleir

Michael Sadleir was a British publisher, novelist, bibliographer, and book collector, born in Oxford on December 25, 1888. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and became closely associated with the publishing house Constable, while also developing a remarkable expertise in Victorian literature and book history.

Alongside his publishing work, he wrote both fiction and literary scholarship. His best-known novel is Fanny by Gaslight (1940), a dark, vivid story set in Victorian London that was later adapted for film. He also produced influential studies such as Excursions in Victorian Bibliography and Nineteenth Century Fiction, and wrote important work on figures including Anthony Trollope and Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Sadleir was born Michael Thomas Harvey Sadler and later adopted the spelling “Sadleir” to distinguish himself from his father, Sir Michael Ernest Sadler. His reputation rests not just on the books he wrote, but on the depth of his knowledge as a collector and scholar of nineteenth-century publishing, a field in which he remained highly respected until his death in 1957.