Eden Phillpotts

Eden Phillpotts (4 November 1862 – 29 December 1960) was an English author, poet and dramatist.

He was born in Mount Abu, India, was educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for ten years before studying for the stage and eventually becoming a writer.

Eden Phillpotts was a great-nephew of Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter.

His father Henry Phillpotts was a son of the bishop's younger brother Thomas Phillpotts.

James Surtees Phillpotts the reforming headmaster of Bedford School was his second cousin.

Eden Phillpotts was born on 4 November 1862 at Mount Abu in Rajasthan.

His father Henry was an officer in the Indian Army, while his mother Adelaide was the daughter of an Indian Civil Service officer posted in Madras, George Jenkins Waters.

Henry Phillpotts died in 1865, leaving Adelaide a widow at the age of 21.

With her three small sons, of whom Eden was the eldest, she returned to England and settled in Plymouth.

Phillpotts was educated at Mannamead School in Plymouth.

At school he showed no signs of a literary bent.

In 1879, aged 17, he left home and went to London to earn his living.

He found a job as a clerk with the Sun Fire Office.

Phillpotts' ambition was to be an actor and he attended evening classes at a drama school for two years.

He came to the conclusion that he would never make a name as an actor but might have success as a writer.

In his spare time out of office hours he proceeded to create a stream of small works which he was able to sell.

In due course he left the insurance company to concentrate on his writing, while also working part-time as assistant editor for the weekly Black and White magazine.

Eden Phillpotts maintained a steady output of three or four books a year for the next half century.

He produced poetry, short stories, novels, plays and mystery tales.

Many of his novels were about rural Devon life and some of his plays were distinguished by their effective use of regional dialect.

One of his novels, Widecombe Fair (1913), inspired by an annual fair at the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, provided the scenario for his comic play The Farmer's Wife (1916).

He co-wrote several plays with his daughter Adelaide Phillpotts, The Farmer's Wife and Yellow Sands (1926); she later claimed their relationship was incestuous.

Eden is best known as the author of many novels, plays and poems about Dartmoor.

His Dartmoor cycle of 18 novels and two volumes of short stories still has many avid readers despite the fact that many titles are out of print.

It went on to become a 1928 silent film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

She dedicated her 1932 novel Peril at End House to Phillpotts, and in her autobiography, she expressed gratitude for his early advice on fiction writing and quoted some of it.

Jorge Luis Borges was another Phillpotts admirer.

Borges mentioned him numerous times, wrote at least two reviews of his novels, and included him in his "Personal Library", a collection of works selected to reflect his personal literary preferences.

Philpotts allegedly sexually abused his daughter Adelaide.

The BBC had broadcast the play in 1934.

It was followed by a 1941 remake, directed by Norman Lee and Leslie Arliss.

It became a BBC TV drama in 1955, directed by Owen Reed.

Jan Stewer played Churdles Ash.

Eden Phillpotts died at his home in Broadclyst near Exeter, Devon, on 29 December 1960.

Phillpotts was for many years the President of the Dartmoor Preservation Association and cared passionately about the conservation of Dartmoor.

He was an agnostic and a supporter of the Rationalist Press Association.

Phillpotts was a friend of Agatha Christie, who was an admirer of his work and a regular visitor to his home.

In a 1976 interview for a book about her father, Adelaide described an incestuous "relationship" with him that she says lasted from the age of five or six until her early thirties, when he remarried.

When she herself finally married at the age of 55 her father never forgave her, and never communicated with her again.

Phillpotts wrote a great many books with a Dartmoor setting.