H. De Vere Stacpoole

Henry de Vere Stacpoole (9 April 1863 – 12 April 1951) was an Irish author. His 1908 romance novel The Blue Lagoon has been adapted into multiple films. He published using his own name and sometimes the pseudonym Tyler de Saix.

Biography

Stacpoole was born in Kingstown —today's Dún Laoghaire— in Dublin, on 9 April 1863; he was the last son of the Reverend William Church Stacpoole, a theologian and principal of Kingstown School, and Charlotte Augusta (née Mountjoy). He had three older sisters: the eldest was Florence Stacpoole, who wrote books and pamphlets on health and medicine. Henry attributed his love for nature; which characterized his entire existence, to the influence of his mother. She was of Irish origin but had spent her childhood until the age of twelve in the wildest and most wooded regions of Canada. Reverend William died prematurely in 1870 and the mother decided to return to Ireland where she raised her four children alone. Due to breathing problems that were misdiagnosed, in the winter of 1871, the family moved for a long stay in Southern France, at Nice.

At Portarlington Boarding School in Ireland, 100 miles from Kingstown, he received his education. It was not a joyful experience; in the autobiographical Men and Mice he wrote about the fact that his noisy and rough companions abused him physically and mentally, making him feel like "a little [King] Arthur in a cage of baboons." One night he fled through an adjacent girls' school, but his older sister dragged him back to boarding school.