Eden Phillpotts collection

Eden Phillpotts was born on November 4, 1862 at Mt. Abu in India, the son of Captain Henry Phillpotts, who was an officer in the Indian Army, and Adelaide Matilda Sophia Waters, the daughter of a career civil servant. Following the death of his father in 1865, Eden Phillpotts moved to England with his mother. He spent his youth in Dawlish, Devon, and was educated at Mannamead School, Plymouth.

Phillpotts left school at the age of seventeen and moved to London where he first worked as a clerk with an insurance firm--a position he held from 1879-1889--and studied acting at a school for dramatic art. Eventually Phillpotts turned to writing and in 1888 his first book, My Adventure in the Flying Scotsman, was published. In 1890 Phillpotts took an editorial position with Black and White, a weekly periodical. By 1899, Phillpotts decided to concentrate exclusively on his own writing and returned to Devon, living first at Torquay (1899-1929) and eventually at Broadclyst (1929-1960), where he remained the duration of his life. Phillpotts died in Broadclyst, Exeter, England on December 29, 1960.

Phillpotts was a prolific writer who is best-known for a series of eighteen novels set in and around Dartmoor, England, which was near his home. Phillpotts also wrote nine industrial novels, focussing on various English industries, and a substantial number of detective novels; he produced close to one hundred novels during the course of his career. Phillpotts was also a dramatist and wrote thirty-five plays for the stage as well as twenty radio plays. He was also a prolific author of short stories, children's books, poetry, and non-fiction.

Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960): Selected Letters, edited and with an introduction by James Y. Dayananda. New York: University Press of America, 1984.