Sidney Kilner Levett-Yeats (c. 1858–1916), an English novelist known professionally as S. Levett-Yeats, was the descendant of an old English trading family with connections to British India. S. Levett-Yeats became a soldier with the Indian Army and later joined the Indian Civil Service as a low-level bureaucrat. Inspired by the example of other ambitious Anglo-Indian writers like Rudyard Kipling, Levett-Yeats turned out a series of Victorian potboilers, often set in Europe, that earned him a place on the bestseller lists of the day.
Family
Levett-Yeats was descended from Francis Levett, an English factor working for the Levant Company in Livorno, Italy, who later moved to British East Florida to become a planter. Levett's daughter married Dr. David Yeats, a physician who was the Secretary of the East Florida Colony in Florida. The Levetts were an old Anglo-Norman family who grew rich building one of the first large English multinational trading firms, Sir Richard Levett & Co. In that capacity, the family traded around the globe, and Sir Richard Levett, Lord Mayor of London, served as an early member of the London East India Company. Sidney Levett-Yeats was born in England, the son of Charles Levett-Yeats. His father, who died in 1878, was Under-Secretary to the Government of Bombay. His mother was the former Caroline Smith, daughter of James Smith, Esq., of Satara district, Maharashtra, India, where the couple were married at St Thomas' Church in 1857.
Levett-Yeats' brother Gerald Aylmer (known professionally as G.A. Levett-Yeats) was also a writer, as well as an illustrator, particularly of books relating to the fauna and flora of the subcontinent and the East. G.A. Levett-Yeats (1863–1938) lived in Calcutta, and was best known for his illustrations for the books The Birds of Singapore Island and The Common Birds of India. Like his brother, G.A. Levett-Yeats began his career in the Indian civil service, in his case as "sub-deputy opium inspector" in the "Opium Department" in Bengal. G.A. Levett-Yeats' own book about India of 1898 carried the title: India: In the Land of the White Poppy. His other book about India was called My Indian Garden.
