An English novelist and poet, best known for his 1898 novel, Moonfleet. An extremely successful businessman as well, he became chairman of the arms manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth during World War I.

Contents

The Lost Stradivarius (1895)

The Nebuly Coat (1903) (Illustrated)

Moonfleet (1898)

Moonfleet-

John Trenchard, an orphan living with his aunt in the town of Moonfleet, hears rumours of a secret treasure hidden years before by the notorious thief Blackbeard. While exploring the town, John gets caught up in the search for the treasure, and embarks on a series of adventures that change the course of his life.

Moonfleet is a tale of smuggling first published in 1898 and was extremely popular among children worldwide up until the 1970s, mostly for its themes of adventure and gripping storyline. It remains a popular story widely read and is still sometimes studied in schools.

Moonfleet is the best-known work from author John Meade Falkner. It has been adapted numerous times for television, film, and radio, most notably in 1955 by director Fritz Lang.

THE LOST STRADIVARIUS is a beautifully constructed ghost story, concerning a Victorian Oxford student and music aficionado who discovers an eighteenth-century Italian musical suite; when he plays a certain section of it with his friend in his rooms in Magdalen Hall, a presence seems to stir around them.

THE NEBULY COAT has drawn praise from writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Graham Greene, E. M. Forster, John Betjeman, Henry Newbolt, and A. N. Wilson, while Lady Violet Bonham Carter, visiting a munitions works in 1915, fell into conversation with one of the directors, with whom she began discussing books. She told him that there was one book that he must read; 'I cannot tell you why, because its quality is indescribable—it is called THE NEBULY COAT.' 'I wrote it,' relied the director.

The novel tells of the experiences of a young architect, Arthur Westray, who is despatched to the sleepy Dorset town of Cullerne to oversee restoration work on the once splendid, but now sadly deteriorated, Cullerne Minster. The project would seem to offer little by way of excitement: Cullerne is quiety dying, and Westray fears that any restoration efforts are doomed through lack of finance. He soon finds himself, rather unwillingly, caught up in the current of Cullerne life, and hears rumours about a mystery surrounding the claim to the title of Lord Blandamer, whose family vault is sited in Cullerne Minster, and whose arms—The Nebuly Coat—adorn the Minster's great transept window. When the new Lord Blandamer arrives, promising to pay all the costs of restoration, the inhabitants rejoice—all except Westray, who suspects that the new Lord is not what he seems, and the gone-to-seed organist, Sharnall, who seems close to solving the mystery of the Blandamer inheritance.

Part social comedy, part Hardyesque tragedy, and part murder mystery, THE NEBULY COAT stands unique among english novels.