Anthony Quiller Couch (1863-1944), [ pseudonym "Q"],
English author, poet, anthologist, and literary critic. He wrote many
popular novels and essays and was a noted lecturer at Cambridge University. His
legacy lives on in the grammar school system of Cornwall. With his vast number
of short stories, Q shows his dynamic range of style and creativity with tales
of the supernatural, Viking tales, satires, historical fiction, romantic
adventures, tales of heroic swashbuckling, mystery and crime fiction, and
sea-going adventures.
Sir Arthur
Quiller Couch was born 21 November 1863 at Bodmin in county Cornwall in the
southwest of England. His father, Thomas Quiller Couch, a Cornish physician,
his mother Mary from Devon. His sisters Florence Mabel and Lilian would also
become writers.
He attended
Newton Abbot College in Devon, then Clifton College before entering Trinity
College, Oxford in 1882. While there he contributed to the Oxford Magazine
and wrote his adventure romance Dead Man’s Rock (Cassell, 1887) under
his "Q" pseudonym. The same year he moved to London. The
Astonishing History Of Troy Town (1888), and The Splendid Spur
(1889) followed. The same year, on 22 August 1889, he married Louisa Amelia,
with whom he would have two children. Like his father, his son Bevil would
attend Oxford before joining up as special reservist, artillery officer, during
World War I. He died in Germany during the great flu epidemic of 1919. His
daughter Foy would become friends with Daphne Du Maurier, who would
posthumously finish and publish Q's Castle D'Or, a tale where the
legendary Tristan and Iseult are transplanted to Cornwall in a spellbinding
love story.
While in London
Q took up journalism and was assistant editor to Cassell publishing's Liberal
weekly The Speaker. In 1891, on the advice of his doctor due to illness,
he and Louisa settled at their home, `The Haven', beside the sea at Fowey in
Cornwall. His love of rowing and yachting led to his being appointed Commodore
of the Royal Fowey Yacht Club in 1911 until his death. He was the Mayor of
Fowey 1937-38. His collection of short stories, I Saw Three Ships &
Other Winter's Tales was published first in 1892. His Cornish The
Delectable Duchy: Stories, Studies, and Sketches (1893) is a series of
historical fictional sketches.
Perhaps his most
famous ghost (short) story, The Roll-Call of the Reef was published in
1895, The Blue Pavilions in 1891. In 1895 Q published an anthology on
16th and 17th-century English lyrists, The Golden Pomp. Wandering
Heath: Stories, Studies & Sketches (1896) contains one of his more
famous stories, the Napoleonic ghost story Roll-Call of the Reef. He
would later finish Robert Louis
Stevenson's St. Ives: being the adventures of a French
prisoner in England (1898). Hetty Wesley (1903), Fort Amity
(1904), Shakespeare's Christmas and Other Stories (1904), The Shining
Ferry (1905), and Sir John Constantine (1906) were some of his many
titles to follow. His The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales (1910) is
his re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, Blue Beard, Cinderella, and Beauty and the
Beast, one of the morals from it;
Many shy, unhappy creatures
From the covert watch your mirth:
“Foul are we,” they mourn; “our features
Blot the sun, deform the earth.”
Pity, love them, speak them fair:
Half their woe ye may repair.
(Beauty and the Beast)
Q devoted much
of his time and energy to the Oxford Book series, including the Oxford Book
of English Verse 1250–1900 (1900), The Oxford Book of Ballads
(1910), and the Oxford Book of English Prose (1923). Also during his
years in Cornwall he held a number of public offices and committee ships,
advocating school system reform, which led to his being Knighted in 1910.
".. a liberal education is not an appendage to be
purchased by a few: that Humanism is, rather, a quality which can, and should,
condition all our teaching; which can, and should, be impressed as a character
upon it all, from a poor child’s first lesson in reading up to a tutor’s last
word to his pupil on the eve of a Tripos."
Arthur Quiller Couch, 7 July 1912.
In 1912 until
his death he was appointed professor of English literature at Cambridge
University and also fellow of English at Jesus College, Cambridge. Q would
publish many of the lectures he delivered to his students that were extremely
popular, including On the Art of Writing (1916) and On the Art of
Reading (1920). From his Preface of his lectures: "Literature is
not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practised."
On 12 May 1944,
Sir Arthur Quiller Couch died at his home in Fowey, and was laid to rest in the
Saint Nicholas Churchyard in Fowey, Cornwall, England. Memories and Opinions,
Q's unfinished autobiography at his death, was published in 1945. Q's friend
Helene Hanff wrote Q's Legacy (1986) which would later be adapted to the
stage and film.
http://www.online-literature.com/quiller-couch/
