Hall Caine

Novelist and dramatist Hall Caine, though largely forgotten now, was a hugely popular writer in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Born Thomas Henry Hall Caine on May 14, 1853, in Runcorn, Cheshire, England, his father was a Manx Man who moved to Liverpool, where he apprenticed as a ship's smith. After Hall's birth (he hated the name Thomas and never used it, even after he was knighted), the family moved back to Liverpool, where young Hall grew up. Hall Caine frequently took many trips to visit the Caine family on the Isle of Man. He was apprenticed to an architect and surveyor and plied his trade as a surveyor while self-educating himself through wide reading.

"Shadow of a Crime", an 1885 novel featuring a love triangle, was a best-seller.

In 1887 he published a critical book about Samuel Taylor Coleridge that failed, but his return to fiction that same year with The Deemster (1917), a romance set in the Isle of Man, was a hit (a deemster is a judge on the Isle of Man). In all, he published 15 romantic novels over 40 years. Many had themes influenced by his Christian socialist political sympathies.

His popularity was immense, and his 1897 novel "The Christian" (later made into a film, The Christian (1915)) was the first novel to sell over a million copies in the United Kingdom.

In August 1902, when King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited the Isle of Man, Caine was invited on board the royal yacht as the royal couple toured the island (the queen was a fan). He was a major celebrity in his own right, as well as a celebrated author. During World War One he wrote propaganda articles urging the United States to join the fight against Germany and her allies.

He declined a baronetcy in 1917 but accepted a knighthood, insisting he be styled Sir Caine Hall. After the Great War his popularity began to decline, as his style was considered old-fashioned.

He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 King's New Year's Honours List before being awarded the Companion of Honour in the 1922 King's Honours List for his services to Literature.

His return to fiction in 1921 with "The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin", another romance set in the Isle of Man, did not reach the level of popular success he was accustomed to and was poorly received by critics. He was derided as Victorian. Many of his novels were made into movies during the silent era.

"The Manxman" was turned into The Manxman (1929), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The last film made from a Hall Caine property was The Bondman (1929), also released in 1929. Such was the decline of his reputation and popularity that no sound film has ever been made from his works. Caine is little remembered today, as his novels are considered badly written; the characterizations are fuzzy and one plot is much like the other.

He became a lecturer and theatrical critic, which introduced him to some influential people such as actor Sir Henry Irving and author Bram Stoker, who dedicated Dracula (1931) to him. He became the secretary, factotum and nurse to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the last years of the great poet's life. Aside from a memoir of Rossetti that sold well, Caine's early endeavors in serious literature met with little success. However, when he abandoned literary criticism for romantic fiction (in the Walter Scott vein), he became popular.

In 1931 G. K. Chesterton wrote his literary epitaph: "Bad story writing is not a crime. Mr. Hall Caine walks the streets openly, and cannot be put in prison for an anticlimax.

"He died on August 31, 1931, at the age of 78, the same year that Chesterton dismissed him as a bad writer.