Eden Phillpotts, writer of more than 250 works ranging from verse to detective stories, is also known for twenty-odd plays, particularly two comedies of Devonshire country life, The Farmer's Wife (1916) and Yellow Sands (1926).

Phillpotts was born at Mount Aboo in Rajputana, India, where his father, Capt. Henry Phillpotts, was a political agent, but he received his education in England, at Mannamead School, Plymouth. In 1880, when he was seventeen, Phillpotts went to London, where he worked as a clerk in the Sun Fire Insurance Company. He also enrolled at a school of drama but, deciding that he was unfitted for acting, he turned to writing in his free time. By 1890 he was earning enough from his writing to leave the insurance office and embark on a full-time literary career. A shy, withdrawn man, he left London to settle in Devon, first in Torquay, then at Broad Clyst near Exeter, where...