R. E. (Robert Edward) Francillon

Born in Gloucester in 1841, Robert Edward Francillon became an English journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1864, and later made his name in journalism rather than law.

Francillon worked for many years in newspapers and periodicals, eventually becoming managing editor of The Globe. Alongside that career he published a substantial body of fiction and nonfiction, including novels and the memoir Mid-Victorian Memories, which helped preserve his recollections of the literary and journalistic world he knew.

He died in 1919. Today he is remembered less as a single-book celebrity than as one of those versatile late-Victorian writers who kept the era's reading culture in motion across newspapers, magazines, and books.