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H. C. Bailey biography

Bailey

 

 

H. C. Bailey

(1878 - 1961)

Born in London, England, Feb. 1, 1878, Died in Llanfairfechen, North Wales, March 24. 1961 Henry Christopher Bailey lived most of his life in London. He attended the City of London School, and graduated with honors in classics from Corpus Christi College of the University of Oxford. From 1901 to 1946, he worked for London's Daily Telegraph. He began as a drama critic and was a war correspondent, and finally an editorial writer. In addition to his mystery stories, he also wrote an historical novel each year from 1901 through 1928. These novels had various settings and were from a variety of historical periods. He also wrote a history of the Franco-Prussian war.

Bailey married Lydia Haden Janet Guest in 1908, and they had two daughters. He did his writing in the evenings after his work on the Daily Telegraph. In addition to his writing, he also enjoyed gardening. He was a founding member of The Detection Club.

Bailey created two detective series. His first series was about Reggie Fortune who had trained in medicine for family practice, but who was employed by Scotland Yard as a medical expert in murder cases. Bailey's second series was about Joshua Clunk, a solicitor for lower class criminals. Clunk employed a staff of investigators to located dangerous criminals.

The first Mr. Fortune stories by H.C. Bailey appeared in book form in the early 1920s at the same time that Arthur Conan Doyle was publishing what would be the final adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Just as Holmes was at his best in the shorter form—with the grand exception of The Hound of the Baskervilles—Reggie Fortune was, for the most part, more successful with readers when taken in short doses. Perhaps no other major fictional detective of the Golden Age appeared in as many short stories as the cherubic country doctor turned detective. Starting with Call Mr. Fortune in 1920 and ending with Mr. Fortune Here in 1940, Bailey published an astonishing twelve collections of Fortune short stories, not counting three omnibus collections of previously published material.

Information source: wikipedia