Charles Garvice

Charles Garvice (1850–1920) was an English writer of romantic fiction who, after an unsuccessful start as a poet and dramatist, became the best-selling author of his kind in the English-speaking world. He produced some 150 novels, among them Just a Girl, Only a Girl's Love, Nell of Shorne Mills and The Marquis, and by 1914 his books were said to have sold seven million copies, with vast circulation in the United States through cheap series like Street & Smith's New Eagle. Critics ignored or mocked him; readers did not. He also farmed in Devon, served as a county magistrate and was president of the Institute of Lecturers.