Robert Murray Gilchrist was born in Sheffield, England in 1867. He never married and throughout his life lived mostly in remote places, including the North Derbyshire village of Holmesfield and a remote part of the Peak District.
He began his writing career in 1890 with a novel, Passion the Plaything, and would go on to publish a total of 22 novels, six story collections, four regional interest books, and a play. His stories appeared in many popular periodicals of that era, including The Temple Bar and the decadent journal The Yellow Book. Not much is known about Gilchrist’s personal life, but he is known to have lived for a time with a male companion, and given that Gilchrist never married and sometimes featured homoerotic themes in his wo
