Sir Hall Caine Sir Hall Caine, C.H., who died on
Monday at the age of seventy-eight, was the most popular novelist of pre- War England, though Miss Marie Corelli for a time ran him close. Like Thomas Hardy he began life as an architect and professed revolutionary sentiments in his youth. He acted as secretary to Dante Rossetti in the last troubled year of the poet-painter's life (1881-82), and Rossetti is said to have suggested that he might find good subjects for novels in the Isle of Man, where Hall Caine's father was born. His first real success in fiction came with The Deeraster in 1887, and other Manx stories like The Manxman won him fame and fortune. He did not confine himself to the island which he loved and made his home. His romantic story of a Roman revolution, The Eternal City, was one of his most popular books. Most of his stories were dramatized and the late Mr. Wilson Barrett's robust manner fitted Sir Hall Caine's equally robust heroes. The novelist was knighted in 1918 and made a Companion of Honour in 1922. We have also to record the death of Dr. W. W. Jackson, a former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, at the age of ninety-three, whom all middle-aged Oxford men will remember.
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