William Black (13 November 1841 – 10 December 1898) was a novelist born in Glasgow, Scotland. During his lifetime, Black's novels were immensely popular and compared favourably with those of Anthony Trollope. However, his fame and popularity did not survive long into the 20th century.
Biography
William was born to James Black and his second wife Caroline Conning. He was educated to be a landscape painter, a training that influenced his literary life. As a writer, he became known for his detailed, atmospheric descriptions of landscapes and seascapes in novels such as White Wings: A Yachting Romance (1880).
At the age of 23 he went to London, having had some experience with Glasgow journalism. He joined the staff of the Morning Star and later the Daily News, of which he became assistant-editor. He wrote a weekly serial in The Graphic. During the Austro-Prussian War, he acted as a war correspondent.
Black's first novel, James Merle, appeared in 1864, and had little success. Black later disowned it and reputedly bought copies to destroy them. Two further early novels Love or Marriage (1868) and The Monarch of Mincing Lane (1871) did little to advance his career, and all three were omitted from the collected edition of Black's works issued by the publisher Sampson Low from 1892.
The publication of A Daughter of Heth in 1871 at once established his popularity. It tells of a young girl brought up in Catholic France, who comes to live with her more austere Protestant relatives in southern Scotland, and ends with personal tragedy. The travel story The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton followed in 1872. In 1874 A Princess of Thule was another big success, later adapted into a musical play, The Maid of Arran, by a young L. Frank Baum.
