E. Charles Vivian

Evelyn Charles Henry Vivian was the pseudonym of Charles Henry Cannell, a British editor and writer of fantasy and supernatural, detective novels and stories. Prior to becoming a writer, Cannell was a former soldier in the Boer War and journalist for The Daily Telegraph. Cannell began writing novels under the pen-name "E. Charles Vivian" in 1907. Cannell started writing fantastic stories for the arts magazine Colour and the aviation journal Flying (which Cannell edited after leaving the Telegraph) in 1917-18, sometimes publishing them under the pseudonym "A.K. Walton". Vivian is best known for his Lost World fantasy novels such as City of Wonder and his series of novels featuring supernatural detective Gregory George Gordon Green or "Gees" which he wrote under his "Jack Mann" pseudonym. Vivian also wrote several science-fiction stories, including the novel Star Dust about a scientist who can create gold. Critic Jack Adrian has praised Cannell's lost-world stories as "bursting with ideas and colour and pace", and "superb examples of a fascinating breed". Influences on Vivian's work included Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Arthur Machen and the American novelist Arthur O. Friel. Vivian also published fiction under several other pseudonyms, including Westerns as "Barry Lynd". Adrian has noted that some of the pseudonyms Cannell used "will never now be identified". For younger readers, Vivian wrote Robin Hood and his Merry Men, a retelling of the Robin Hood legend. Vivian also edited three British pulp magazines. From 1918 to 1922 Vivian edited The Novel Magazine, and later, for the publisher Walter Hutchinson (1887-1950), Hutchinson's Adventure-Story Magazine (which serialised three of Vivian's novels) and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story Magazine. In addition to UK writers, Vivian often reprinted fiction from American pulp magazines such as Adventure and Weird Tales in the Hutchinson publications. Outside the field of fiction, Vivian was noted for the non-fiction book, A History of Aeronautics.