author
Richard Ganthony
1856–1924
Best remembered for the hit stage fantasy A Message from Mars, this Liverpool-born actor-playwright built a career on both sides of the Atlantic. His most famous work mixed comedy, morality, and early science-fiction in a way that clearly caught the public imagination.
1 Audiobook
A message from Mars : A fantastic comedy in three acts
by Richard Ganthony
About the author
Born in Liverpool in 1856, Richard Ganthony spent much of his career in the United States and worked as both an actor and a playwright. The basic facts of his life are consistent across major reference sources, which place his death in 1924.
Ganthony is chiefly remembered for A Message from Mars, a fantasy comedy-drama first produced in 1899. The play was a notable success on stage and proved durable enough to be revised, published, and adapted for film, helping keep his name alive long after its first run.
For listeners coming to him now, Ganthony is interesting not just as a playwright of the late Victorian and Edwardian theater, but as a writer whose best-known story blends stage wit with an early science-fiction premise. Confirmed online records of his work survive, but I couldn’t verify a suitable portrait image from the sources I checked.