Jeffery Farnol (1878–1952)

John Jeffery Farnol was born in Aston, Birmingham, England, UK, son of Kate Jeffery and Henry John Farnol, a factory-employed brass-founder. The marriage was to produce three more children, two boys and a girl. He was brought up in London and Kent. He attended the Westminster Art School, after he had lost his job in a Birmingham metal-working firm. In 1900, he married Blanche Wilhelmina Victoria Hawley (1883-1955), the 16 year-old daughter of the noted New York scenic artist H. Hughson Hawley; they moved to the United States, where he found work as a scene painter. They had a daughter, Gillian. He returned to England around 1910, and settled in Eastbourne, Sussex. In 1938, he divorced and remarried Phyllis Mary Clarke on 20 May, and adopted her daughter, Charmian Jane. He died aged 73 in Eastbourne on 9 August 1952, after a long battle with cancer.

He published his first romance novel My Lady Caprice in 1907. The success of his early novels led Farnol to become a professional writer. He produced around 40 novels and volumes of stories, and some non-fiction and children's books. His last book was completed by his second wife Phyllis. Two of his early books, The Amateur Gentleman and The Broad Highway, have been issued in a version edited by mediatic romance novelist Barbara Cartland.