Max Pemberton
Sir Max Pemberton JP (19 June 1863 – 22 February 1950) was a popular English novelist and publisher working mainly in the adventure and mystery genres.
Biography.
He was educated at St Albans School, Merchant Taylors’ School, and Caius College, Cambridge. A club man, journalist, and dandy (Lord Northcliffe admired his ‘fancy vests’), he frequented both Fleet Street and The Savage Club.
Pemberton was the editor of boys’ magazine Chums in 1892–1893 during its heyday. Between 1896 and 1906 he also edited Cassell’s Magazine, in which capacity he published the early works of R. Austin Freeman and William Le Queux.
His most famous work The Iron Pirate was a best-seller during the early 1890s and it initiated his prolific writing career. It was the story of a great gas-driven iron-clad, which could outpace the navies of the world and terrorize the shipping of the Atlantic Ocean. Other notable works included Captain Black (1911). Pemberton’s 1894 collection Jewel Mysteries: From a Dealer’s Notebook was a series of Mystery stories revolving around stolen jewels. Pemberton also wrote historical fiction. Pemberton’s I Crown Thee King is set in Sherwood Forest during the time of Mary I. His novels Beatrice of Venice (1904) and Paulina (1922) center on Napoleon’s military campaigns in Italy.
In January 1908, just one year after the death of Pemberton’s friend and fellow Crimes Club member, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, he had a story titled Wheels of Anarchy published by Cassell (publisher). This book includes the following book dedication in the form of an ‘Author’s Note’:
This story was suggested to me by the late B. Fletcher Robinson deeply mourned. The subject was one in which he had interested himself for some years, and almost the last message I had from him expressed the desire that I would keep my promise and treat the idea in a book. This I have now done, adding something of my own to the brief notes he left me but chiefly bringing to the task an enduring gratitude for a friendship which nothing can replace.
