At the end of the nineteenth century, Arthur Quiller-Couch was a prominent man of letters, one of a group of literary, often scholarly, journalists whose work filled the pages of the better magazines with short stories, book reviews, and causeries. As assistant editor of the liberal weekly The Speaker, published by Cassell from 1890 to 1899, "Q," as he usually signed his works, met and worked with many of the major writers of the period, including Oscar Wilde, George Moore, J. M. Barrie, Lord Acton, William Butler Yeats, William Watson, and Henry James. Cassell also published Q's first novels and provided a steady stream of commissions, some for hackwork and some for creative work. Q wrote twenty-one published novels and left one unfinished at the time of his death. Thirteen of the novels dealt in some way with Cornwall and its people: sometimes tangentially, often humorously, but always with affection. The nine others ranged over time, events, and style without the common thread of place.
