Publisher's Synopsis
Arthur Hammond Marshall (1866-1934), better known by his pen name Archibald Marshall, was an English author, publisher and journalist whose novels were particularly popular in the US. In 1921 he was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by Yale University. He published over 50 books and was recognised as a realist in his writing style, with some seeing him as a successor to Anthony Trollope. He was educated at Highgate School and, not wishing to join his father's shipping company, had first intended to be a clergymen and studied theology at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902 he married the widow Nellie Banks, who had three children by her previous marriage, with whom he had one daughter born in 1904. Moving to Beaulieu in Hampshire after his marrriage, he befriended John, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the Conservative MP and promoter of motoring, who invited him to be editor of The Car which was first issued in August 1903. Marshall later wrote a biography of Lord Montagu in collaboration with Lady Laura Troubridge which was published in 1930. Marshall's first novel, Lord Stirling's Son, had been published in 1895, followed by Peter Binney: Undergraduate in 1899. His next, The House of Merrilees, was rejected by several publishers so in 1904 Marshall established the publishing firm Alston Rivers together with two others, and used it to publish his own work, including a rewritten version of The House of Merrilees. During his time at Cambridge he had written articles for The Granta under R C Lehmann and when Lehmann became editor of the Daily News in 1901, Marshall was appointed as his secretary and later became literary editor, helping his friend G K Chesterton obtain a position with the paper while in this latter post. Marshall left the Daily News in 1911, hoping to earn a living from his novel writing, moving to Switzerland with his family in 1913, but in 1916 was forced to return to journalism as the Paris correspondent of the Daily News. Between 1926-34 he wrote short stories for Punch, many of which were later republished in his books Simple People, Simple Stories, and Simple Stories from Punch. Upsidonia (1915) has been described as an Erewhonian science fiction satire in which a young man enters the parallel world of an underground civilisation where all values, particularly economic ones, suffer a reversal - thus wealth is forbidden and theft seen as a form of giving - resulting in many amusing situations which Marshall presents with a lightly comic touch.