Robert Barr (writer)

Robert Barr (writer)
Born (1849-09-16)16 September 1849
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Died ( 1912-10-21)21 October 1912
Woldingham, Surrey, England, UK
Pen name Luke Sharp
Occupation Educator, journalist, editor, publisher, novelist
Nationality Scottish

Robert Barr (16 September 1849 – 21 October 1912[1]) was a Scottish-Canadian short story writer and novelist, born in Glasgow, Scotland.

Early years in Canada

Barr emigrated with his parents to Upper Canada at age four and was educated in Toronto at Toronto Normal School. Barr became a teacher and eventual headmaster of the Central School of Windsor, Ontario. While he had that job he began to contribute short stories—often based on personal experiences—to the Detroit Free Press. In 1876 Barr quit his teaching position to become a staff member of that publication, in which his contributions were published with the pseudonym "Luke Sharp." This nom de plume was derived from the time he attended school in Toronto. At that time he would pass on his daily commute a shop sign marked, "Luke Sharpe, Undertaker", a combination of words Barr considered amusing in their incongruity.[2] Barr was promoted by the Detroit Free Press, eventually becoming its news editor.[3]

London years

Barr (left) with Arthur Conan Doyle (center)

In 1881 Barr decided to "vamoose the ranch", as he said, and relocated to London to establish the weekly English edition of the Detroit Free Press.[4] In 1892 he founded the magazine The Idler, choosing Jerome K. Jerome as his collaborator (wanting, as Jerome said, "a popular name"). He retired from its co-editorship in 1895. In London of the 1890s Barr became a more prolific author—publishing a book a year—and was familiar with many of the best-selling authors of his day, including Bret Harte and Stephen Crane. Most of his literary output was of the crime genre, then quite in vogue. When Sherlock Holmes stories were becoming well-known, Barr wrote and published in the Idler the first Holmes parody, "The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs" (1892), a spoof that was continued a decade later in another Barr story, "The Adventure of the Second Swag" (1904). Despite those jibes at the growing Holmes phenomenon, Barr remained on very good terms with its creator Arthur Conan Doyle. In Memories and Adventures, a serial memoir published 1923–24, Doyle described him as "a volcanic Anglo—or rather Scot-American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest natures underneath it all".[5]

Death

Barr died from heart disease on 21 October 1912, at his home in Woldingham, a small village southeast of London.[6]

Works

  • In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories (1892)
  • The Face and the Mask (1894)
  • In the Midst of Alarms (1894, 1900, 1912), a story of the attempted Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866.
  • From Whose Bourne (1896)
  • One Day's Courtship (1896)
  • Revenge!
  • The Strong Arm
  • A Woman Intervenes (1896), a story of love, finance, and American journalism.
  • Tekla: A Romance of Love and War (1898)
  • Jennie Baxter, Journalist (1899)
  • The Unchanging East (1900)
  • The Victors (1901)
  • A Prince of Good Fellows (1902)
  • Over The Border: A Romance (1903)
  • The O'Ruddy, A Romance, with Stephen Crane (1903)
  • A Chicago Princess (1904)
  • The Speculations of John Steele (1905)
  • The Tempestuous Petticoat (1905–12)
  • A Rock in the Baltic (1906)
  • The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont (1906)
  • The Measure of the Rule (1907)
  • Stranleigh's Millions (1909)
  • The Sword Maker (1910)
  • The Palace of Logs (1912)

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who 1914, xxi
  2. ↑ C. Stan Allen, "A Glimpse of Robert Barr." Canadian Magazine 4 (1895), 548.
  3. ↑ Allen, 547.
  4. ↑ Stephen Knight, introduction to The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), x.
  5. ↑ Knight, x-xi.
  6. ↑ The New York Times. 23 October 1912.

Other sources

  • Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 41.
  • Jerome K. Jerome, My Life and Times (1926)
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