Robert Hichens (writer)

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Robert Hichens
music critic
Alma mater

Robert Smythe Hichens (14 November 1864 – 20 July 1950) was an English journalist, novelist, music lyricist, short story writer, music critic and collaborated on successful plays. He is best remembered as a satirist of the "Naughty Nineties".[1][2]

Biography

Hichens was born in Speldhurst in Kent, the eldest son of the Rev. Frederick Harrison Hichens, and his wife Abigail Elizabeth Smythe.[3][4] He was educated at Clifton College,[5] the Royal College of Music and early on had a desire to be a musician.[1] Later in life he would become music critic on The World, taking the place of George Bernard Shaw.[1] He studied at the London School of Journalism. Hichens was a great traveller. Egypt was one of his favourite destinations – he first went there in the early 1890s for his health.[1] For most of his later life he lived outside England, in Switzerland and the Riviera.[1] Hichens was a homosexual;[6] he never married.[1]

Hichens first novel, The Coastguard's Secret (1886), was written when he was only seventeen. He first became well known among the reading public with The Green Carnation (1894), a satire of Hichens's friends Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas; since the work made clear Wilde was homosexual it was withdrawn from publication in 1895,[1] but not before helping set the stage for Wilde's public disgrace and downfall.[1][6]

Hichens was also friends with several other writers, including

Reggie Turner,[6] as well as the composer Maude Valérie White.[7]

Hichens in August-September 1895 edition of The Bookman

Hichens's first big success was

The Slave (1899), a fantasy about an amazing emerald;[1] Tongues of Conscience (1900), a collection of five horror stories including "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" (this story is about a supernatural visitation and is thought by some to be Hichens's best fiction – it is frequently anthologised).[1][2] "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" was not initially well-received, with Frederic Taber Cooper calling the story "a hideous bit of morbidity"[8] and Edmund Wilson dismissing the story as "trash".[8] Later reviews of the story were more positive; J. A. Cuddon called it "outstanding" and compared it with "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant and "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions.[9] Brian Stableford described the story as an "authentic masterpiece of horror fiction",[2] and Jason Colavito called it "possibly one of the greatest stories of its age".[8]

Hichens's Felix (1902), is an early fictional treatment of hypodermic morphine addiction, while The Garden of Allah (1904) sold well internationally,[1] and was made into a film three times.

Hichens published his memoirs in 1947, Yesterday.

Selected bibliography

Novels

First edition cover of The Call of the Blood (1906)

Collections

Nonfiction

Anthologies containing stories by Hichens

  • Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror 1st Series (1928)
  • Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1957)
  • The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1966)
  • Medley Macabre (1966)
  • Black Water (1984)
  • I Shudder at Your Touch (1992)
  • 4 Classic Ghostly Tales (1993)

Short stories

  • "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" (1900)
  • "Demetriadi's Dream"

Plays

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o John Sutherland. "HICHENS, Robert" in The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. 1989
  2. ^
    ISBN 1-55862-206-3
    (pp. 268-70).
  3. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33851. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource
    .
  5. ^ "Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. p84: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April, 1948
  6. ^
    ISBN 0521024897
    , (p. 115).
  7. ISBN 025202740X
    , (p. 90).
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7864-3968-3
    (pp. 307–324). (Reprinted from Cooper's Some English Story Tellers, 1912. pp. 342–375.)
  9. ISBN 978-1-870630-94-8
    (p. 44)

Additional sources

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Robert Smythe Hichens
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