P. B. St.

Born in 1821, Percy Bolingbroke St. John was an English journalist and author, the eldest son of writer James Augustus St. John. He grew up around books and research, traveled with his father, and is also said to have spent time in America—experiences that helped shape the wide-ranging subjects of his later work.

St. John wrote across several forms rather than staying in a single lane. In the 1840s he edited periodicals including the Mirror of Literature, and over the years he produced fiction, travel writing, historical works, and many translations from French. He also published under the pseudonym "Captain Flack," showing the flexible, industrious career of a writer working in the fast-moving print culture of Victorian Britain.

He is remembered today as one of those remarkably versatile nineteenth-century literary figures whose books carried readers into political upheaval, distant landscapes, and brisk adventure. He died in 1889, leaving behind a large and varied body of work.