Charles Garvice
| Charles Andrew Garvice | |
|---|---|
Charles Andrew Garvice's portrait
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| Born |
24 August 1850 Stepney, London, England, UK |
| Died | 1 March 1920 (aged 69) |
| Pen name | Charles Garvice, Caroline Hart, Chas. Garvice, Charles Gibson |
| Occupation | writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1875–1919 |
| Genre | Romance |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Jones |
| Children | 8 |
Charles Garvice (24 August 1850 – 1 March 1920) was a prolific British writer of over 150 romance novels, who also used the female pseudonym Caroline Hart. He was a popular author in the UK, the United States and translated around the world. He was ‘the most successful novelist in England’, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910. He published novels selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914, and since 1913 he was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Despite his enormous success, he was poorly received by literary critics, and is almost forgotten today.
Charles Andrew Garvice was born on 24 August 1850 in or around Stepney, London, England, son of Mira Winter and Andrew John Garvice, a bricklayer. In 1872, he married Elizabeth Jones, and had two sons and six daughters. Garvice suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on 21 February 1920 and was in a coma eight days until his death on 1 March 1920.
Until recently not much has been known about Garvice's personal life. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said "Little .. is known of his family origins and personal life. Obscurity envelops [him]."John Sutherland in the Companion to Victorian Literature said "Little is known of Garvice's life.". In 2010, English freelance author and editor Steve Holland did an exhaustive search of baptismal records, genealogy databases and census records to build a picture of his early life.
Garvice died in 1920 and was buried in Richmond Cemetery.
Garvice got his professional start as a journalist. His first novel, Maurice Durant (1875) was marginally successful in serialized form, but when published as a novel, it did not sell well. He concluded it was too long and too expensive for popular sales - this early experience taught him about the business side of writing. He would spend the next 23 years writing serialized stories for the periodicals of George Munro, who later bound and sold them as novels. Titles included A Modern Juliet, Woven in Fate's Loom, On Love's Altar, His Love So True, A Relenting Fate. Just a Girl (1898) was very popular in the US and its success brought him attention in the UK - from then on every novel he published became a best-seller in England. By 1913 Garvice was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Garvice published over 150 novels selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914.Just a Girl was filmed in 1916. According to Garvice's agent Eveleigh Nash, Garvice's books were as "numerous in the shops and on the railway bookstalls as the leaves of Vallombrosa." He was ‘the most successful novelist in England’, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910.
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