Norman Kadish
| Charles Hamilton | |
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Charles Hamilton
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| Born | Charles Harold St. John Hamilton 8 August 1876 Ealing, London, England, UK |
| Died | 24 December 1961 (aged 85) Kingsgate, Kent, England, UK |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | English |
| Notable works | Billy Bunter |
Charles Harold St. John Hamilton (8 August 1876 – 24 December 1961) was an English writer, specialising in writing long-running series of stories for weekly magazines about recurrent casts of characters, his most frequent and famous genre being boys' public school stories, though he also dealt with other genres. He used a variety of pen-names, generally using a different name for each set of characters he wrote about, the most famous being Frank Richards for the Greyfriars School stories (featuring Billy Bunter). Other important pen-names included Martin Clifford (for St Jim's), Owen Conquest (for Rookwood) and Ralph Redway (for The Rio Kid). He also wrote hundreds of stories under his real name such as the Ken King stories for The Modern Boy.
He is estimated to have written about 100 million words in his lifetime (Lofts & Adley 1970:170) and has featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific author. Vast amounts of his output are available on the Friardale website.
Hamilton was born in Ealing, London to a family of eight children. His parents were Mary Ann Hannah (née Trinder - born 1847)(Lofts & Adley 1975:16) and John Hamilton (1839-1884), a Master Carpenter. Charles Hamilton was privately educated at Thorn House School in Ealing, where he learned Classical Greek among other subjects. He embarked on a career as a writer of fiction, having his first story accepted almost immediately. According to W.O.G. Lofts (Collectors Digest, no. 239, 1966, p. 30) it appeared in 1895.
Over the following years he was to establish himself as the main writer with the publisher Trapps Holmes, providing several thousand stories on a range of subjects including police, detectives, firemen, Westerns as well as school stories. In 1906 he started to write for the Amalgamated Press and although he continued to have stories published for Trapps Holmes until 1915 (many of which were reprints), his allegiance was gradually to move (Lofts & Adley 1975:25–42).
Amalgamated Press started a new story paper for boys called The Gem in 1907 and by issue number 11 it had established a format – the major content was to be a story about St Jim’s school, starring Tom Merry as the main character and written by Charles Hamilton under the pen name of Martin Clifford. This paper rapidly established itself and anxious to capitalize on its success, a similar venture was launched in 1908. This was to be known as The Magnet, the subject matter was a school called Greyfriars and Hamilton was again to be the author, this time using the name Frank Richards (Lofts & Adley 1975:43–51).
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