W.E. Cule

William Edward Cule (5 December 1870 – 13 July 1944) was a British author of children's books and several books for adults on Christian themes. In all, he wrote some thirty books encompassing a number of popular genres – public school stories, adventure yarns, fairy tales, novels and Christian allegories and fable. His best children's books show an imaginative faculty of a high order and are soundly crafted, befitting his profession as a magazine and book editor. Cule's most popular Christian works are The Man at the Gate of the World and Sir Knight of the Splendid Way, the latter recently reprinted by Lamplighter Publishing in the United States.

Cule was born in 1870 in the village of St Nicholas near the city of Cardiff in Wales, the eldest son of Thomas and Elizabeth Cule. His family moved to Cardiff when his father was appointed as a Customs excise officer. In 1891 Cule was living with his family at 63 Glamorgan Street, Cardiff, and his father was a grocer. The family were devout Baptists and Cule was a committed Christian from an early age, later becoming a Sunday school teacher.

Cule began writing in his teens, and one of his first literary successes was an eisteddfod prize for a poem, awarded by the Welsh preacher poet Evan Gurnos Jones. In 1890 he won an eisteddfod prize for his poem "Violets". Other poems published in the newspaper Barry Dock News included "The Duett Endeth", "Verge of Night: A Fragment","Spring Visitors: A Ballad of Two Chestnuts" and "Learning to Skate: In Seven Chapters". In 1892 he won a prize of a guinea for a poem “True Bravery” published in the Boys’ Own Paper.

Cule gave this brief account of his early literary career: "I came to take to writing, I believe, because of my insatiable love of reading, and as a result, also, of my admiration for everybody who wrote books I liked. I was intended for commercial work, and made one or two attempts in that direction, writing all the while in my leisure time. My first efforts, at the age of sixteen or so, were made in the "Literary Olympic" of Young Folk's Paper. This was a page where young authors might exercise their energies and among my companions at that time, but far before me, were two whose names are better known now, Mr R. Murray Gilchrist and Mr A. J. Adcock. My first profitable venture was made in 1892, when Mr Edward Step (now literary adviser to F. Warne and Company) accepted one of my stories for a boy's magazine. In 1894 one of my stories went to Mr Andrew Melrose, manager of the Sunday School Union and it is through his kindness of suggestion and encouragement that most of my work has been done since. In 1895 I was able to devote myself entirely to writing, and in 1899 Mr Melrose published two volumes, Sir Constant and Child Voices; while Messrs W. and R. Chambers brought out a little fairy book, Mabel's Prince Wonderful.

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