Richard Marsh

Richard Marsh was born Richard Bernard Heldmann in 1857 and built a literary career under a name borrowed from his mother’s maiden name. The change followed a serious break with his earlier life: while in his twenties, he was arrested for forging cheques, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour. The University of Reading dates the offences to 1883 and the arrest to 1884. After his release, he adopted the Marsh name.

He rebuilt himself as a highly productive popular writer, publishing more than sixty novels as well as short fiction and plays. His books move among Gothic suspense, crime, humour and romance, often taking up anxieties about gender and empire. The Beetle: A Mystery appeared in 1897. It became his best-known novel and initially sold far more copies than Stoker’s Dracula, released the same year.

Marsh kept writing while also working within the magazine world. When his health began to fail in 1913, he dictated books to a secretary; he died at home in Haywards Heath in 1915. Manuscripts and typescripts held at Reading show the range of his work, though many surviving items are fragmentary. His career complicates the familiar picture of a Victorian author: the celebrated name on the books was a chosen identity rebuilt after a criminal conviction.