Source: Wikipedia

MP Shiel (July 21, 1865 – February 17, 1947) was a prolific British writer of genre fantasy fiction, remembered mostly for supernatural and science fiction, published as novels, short stories and as serials.

He was born Matthew Phipps Shiell in Montserrat, West Indies, and was of mixed race; his mother Priscilla Ann Blake was a mulatto, while his father Matthew Dowdy Shiell was from a partly Irish background, and was possibly also of mixed race. Shiell was educated at Harrison College in Barbados. On his fifteenth birthday his father had him crowned king of Redonda, a small island.

He moved to England some time after 1880, and changed his surname to Shiel. After some miscellaneous employment he gained in the 1890s a reputation for short stories influenced by Poe. He created the decadent detective Prince Zaleski, and was published by John Lane. He married Carolina Garcia Gomez, who died five years later, and then a widow, Lydia Fawley Jewson - they separated in 1929.

In a short period he produced his greatest critical success, the science fiction novel The Purple Cloud (1901), and major popular success in The Yellow Danger (serial around 1899), the first of a number of works based on topical anti-Chinese racial feeling. Under financial pressures he quickly descended to writing hack work, creating a bibliographic sprawl of serial publication, rewrites and collaborations. Many of these have elements of mystery and detection. Shiel is best remembered for the picaresque hero Prince Zaleski. He also collaborated on detective novels with Louis Tracy, under the joint name Gordon Holmes.

His collaborators included William Thomas Stead as an ideas man, Edgar Jepson, Oswell Blakeston, and later John Gawsworth and Louis Tracy. The content of his works was muddled, but included some rudimentary versions of Nietzsche's thought, promotion of the ideas of Henry George, and casual racism. Some of his work in the Edwardian period seems to have had a provocative effect on H. G. Wells. He spent the last years of his life writing a biography of Jesus Christ.

There is little reliable information about his private life. He died in Chichester.

Some of Shiel's work is available on the Internet through Project Gutenberg. A complete annotated bibliography can be found on the MP Shiel website.

Mike Grost on MP Shiel

M.P. Shiel wrote two mystery short stories in 1895 that show real skill at the construction of pure puzzle plot mysteries. Neither is especially plausible or realistic, but each constructs complex situations loaded with many unanswered, mysterious questions. Shiel then proceeds to uncover ingenious hidden truths about the central situations of the tales, and provides answers to all the mysterious questions based on these new perspectives. By these two works, Shiel has certainly earned at least a footnote in detective history. Shiel also successfully develops an atmosphere of 1890's decadence and bizarrie around these tales. The tales, in their plot construction, their use of central situations that reveal paradoxical elements, their eccentric aristocratic characters that live isolated lives at lonely country houses, and their bizarre atmosphere, seem to anticipate the works of G.K. Chesterton. I have no idea whether Chesterton read Shiel, or not.

Later tales by Shiel in the Prince Zaleski series are not as good; "The S.S." in particular is ridiculous, although it is much admired by some critics. Shiel wrote and collaborated on many other mystery novels and tales of intrigue. All of these are virtually unknown today, and one wonders whether there are any outstanding detective works among them. Shiel promoted crackpot (and worse) religious and political ideas in his work; ideas in "The S.S." and some of the Cummings Monk short stories are offensive to me, and surely to other people as well.

Bibliography

Short Story Collections

Prince Zaleski (1895)

Shapes in the Fire (1896)

The Pale Ape (1911)

Here Comes the Lady (1928)

The Invisible Voices (1935)

The Best Short Stories of MP Shiel (1948)

Xelucha and Others (1975)

Prince Zaleski and Cummings King Monk (1977)

Xelucha and The Primate of the Rose (1994)

Novels

The Rajah's Sapphire (1896)

The Yellow Danger (1898)

Contraband of War (1899)

Cold Steel (1899)

The Man-Stealers (1900)

Lord of the Sea (1901)

The Purple Cloud (1901)

The Weird o' It (1902)

Unto the Third Generation (1903)

The Evil that Men Do (1904)

The Lost Viol (1905)

The Yellow Wave (1905)

The Last Miracle (1906)

The White Wedding (1908)

The Isle of Lies (1909)

This Knot of Life (1909)

The Dragon (1913)

Children of the Wind (1923)

How the Old Woman Got Home (1927)

Dr Krasinski's Secret (1929)

The Black Box (1930)

Say Au R'Voir But Not Goodbye (1933)

This Above All (1933)

The Young Men Are Coming! (1937)

The New King (1981)

Omnibus Volumes

The Empress of the Earth, The Purple Cloud, and Some Short Stories (1979)