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Talbot Mundy

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description: Mundy was born as William Lancaster Gribbon on 23 April 1879 at his parental home of 59 Milson Road, Hammersmith in West London. On 23 May he was baptised into the Anglican denomination of Christianit ...
Mundy was born as William Lancaster Gribbon on 23 April 1879 at his parental home of 59 Milson Road, Hammersmith in West London.[1] On 23 May he was baptised into the Anglican denomination of Christianity at the local St. Matthews Church.[1] His father, Walter Galt Gribbon (1845–95) had been born in Leeds, Yorkshire as the son of a china and glass merchant. After studying at Oxford University's St. John's College, Gribbon trained as a barrister before relocating to Swansea, first working as a school teacher and then an accountant. After his first wife's death, he married Mundy's mother, Margaret Lancaster, in Nantyglo in July 1878.[2] A member of an English family based in Wales, Lancaster was the brother of the politician John Lancaster.[3] After a honeymoon in Ilfracombe, Devon, the newly married couple moved to Hammersmith, where Mundy was their first child. They would have three further children: Walter Harold (b. 1881), Agnes Margaret (b. 1882), and Florence Mary (c.1883), although the latter died in infancy.[4] In 1883 the family moved to Norbiton, although within a few years had moved out of London to Kingston Hill, Surrey.[5]
Mundy was raised into a conservative middle-class Victorian milieu.[6] His father owned a successful accountancy business and was director of the Woking Water and Gas Company, as well as being an active member of the Conservative Party and Primrose League. He was also a devout Anglican, serving as church warden at St. Luke's.[7] The family went on summer holidays to southern coastal towns such as Hythe, Sandgate, and Charmouth, with Mundy also spending time visiting relatives in Bardney, Lincolnshire.[6] He attended Grove House, a preparatory school in Guildford, Surrey, before receiving a scholarship to attend Rugby College, where he arrived in September 1893.[8] In 1895 his father died of a brain hemorrhage, and Mundy henceforth became increasingly rebellious.[9] He left Rugby College without any qualifications in December 1895; in later years he expressed bad memories of the place, describing it as being like "prisons run by sadists".[10] With Mundy unable to go to university, his mother hoped that he might enter the Anglican clergy.[10] He worked briefly for a newspaper in London, although the firm closed shortly after.[11]
He left England and moved to Quedlinburg in northern Germany with his pet fox terrier. He didn't speak German but secured work as an assistant driver towing vans for a circus; after a colleague drunkenly killed his dog he left the job.[12] Back in England, he worked in farming and estate management for his uncle in Lincolnshire.[13]
India and East Africa: 1899–1909
From this point onward, Talbot's own accounts of his life become unreliable, as he would make fictionalised claims about his activities.[14] In March 1899 he sailed aboard the Caledonia to Bombay in British India, where he had secured an administrative job in a famine relief program based in the native state of Baroda.[14] There he purchased a horse and became a fan of pig-sticking, a form of boar hunting.[15] After suffering a bout of malaria he returned to Britain in April 1900.[16] In later years he claimed that during this period he had fought for the British Army in the Second Boer War, although this was untrue, for chronologically it conflicted with his documented activities in Britain.[17] He did however have relatives who fought in the conflict.[18] He also later claimed that while visiting Brighton in summer 1900 he ran into his favourite writer, Rudyard Kipling, in the street, and that they had a conversation about India.[19]
Securing a job as a reporter for the Daily Mail, in March 1901 he returned to India aboard the Caledonia, where he was stationed in Peshawar to report on the Mahsud uprising led by Mulla Pawindah against the British administration.[20] After this assignment, he went tiger hunting.[21] In Bombay in 1901 he met Englishwoman Kathleen Steele, and they had returned to Britain by late 1902, where he gained work for the Walton and Company merchant firm in Holborn.[22] The couple married in Westminster in January 1903.[23] By this point he had amassed large debts, and with his wife fled to Cape Town, South Africa to evade his debtors; in his absence he was declared bankrupt. He wife returned to London, and they never saw each other again.[24]

Mundy was active in the East African ivory trade
In February 1904 he arrived in Mombasa, British East Africa, later claiming that he initially worked as a hunter.[25] He also claimed that he was shot in the leg with a poison spear by a Masai who was stealing his cattle.[26] He travelled to Muanza in German East Africa, where he was afflicted with blackwater fever.[27] Mundy then worked as an elephant hunter, collecting and selling ivory.[28] His later novel, The Ivory Hunter, was inspired largely by his own experiences at this time.[29] In later years he alleged that he met Frederick Selous at this juncture, although Mundy's biographer has pointed out that Selous was not in East Africa at this time.[30] Mundy secured employment as the town clerk of Kisumu, a frontier town where he was stationed during a number of indigenous tribal insurgencies against British imperial rule; the Kisii rebelled in the winter of 1904–05, followed by the Sotik and the Nandi in summer 1905. On each occasion the rebels were defeated by the British Army.[31] Christian missionaries pressured Mundy into overseeing a program of providing clothes for the native population, who often went naked; he thought this unnecessary, although designed a goat-skin apron for the to wear.[32] He had sexual relationships with a variety of indigenous women, and was dismissed from his job as a result.[33] He informed his wife of these activities, thus suggesting that she sue him for divorce; the divorce was granted in May 1908.[34]
Unemployed, he moved to Nairobi, where he met a married woman, Inez Craven, and eloped with her. She divorced her husband in November 1908.[35] The couple moved to an island on Lake Victoria, where they lived from February to June, although were subsequently arrested under the Distressed British Subjects Act; under this, they faced imprisoned for six months in Mombassa before deportation to Bombay, although this eventuality did not occur.[36] In November, the couple married at Mombasa Registry Office; here, he first used the name of "Talbot Mundy", erroneously claiming to the son of Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 20th Earl of Shrewsbury.[37] That month, they left Mombasa aboard the SS Natal, stopping in Djibouti and Port Said on their way to Marseilles, from where they made their way to England.[38] There they visited Mundy's mother n Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire, and she agreed to give Mundy a substantial sum of money; it would be the last time Mundy saw her.[39] Mundy and his wife spent most of the money while staying in London, before leaving from Southampton aboard the SS Teutonic in September 1909, headed for the United States.[40]
United States and early literary career: 1909–18
"Why did I start writing? The price of pork and beans made it necessary. I just got hungry enough, which is always a good thing for beginners. I was in New York and I knew Jeff Hanley, a red haired reporter on a paper there. I would pound out stuff on the typewriter and Jeff would come home, look my stuff over, say it was rotten, which it was, and make me go ahead doing more of it. Finally, under the stint of his irony I wrote a story and sold it to Frank Munsey."
— Talbot Mundy.[41]
Arriving in New York City, the couple moved into a hotel room in the Gashouse District. Soon after arrival, Mundy was mugged and suffered a fractured skull. Recuperating in Bellevue Hospital, doctors feared that he might not survive the injury, while the perpetrator, Joseph Cavill, was indicted with first degree robbery and sentenced to six months imprisonment.[42] Mundy's hospitalisation and his poverty put great strain on his marriage.[43] Throughout 1910, he worked in a series of menial jobs, being fired from several of them.[43] Later, he ran into Jeff Hanley, a reporter who had covered his mugging incident; Hanley was impressed by Mundy's tales of India and Africa, and lent him a typewriter, suggesting that he write some of his stories down for potential publication.[41] Mundy did so, and published his first short story, "A Transaction in Diamonds", in the February 1911 issue of Frank Munsey's magazine, The Scrap Book.[41] His second publication was a non-fiction article, "Pig-sticking in India", which appeared in the April issue of a new pulp magazine, Adventure.[41] Although he and Adventure's editor Arthur Hoffman did not initially like each other,[44] he continued writing for the magazine, as well as for The Scrap Book, Argosy, and Cavalier.[45]
In 1912, he published sixteen short stories and four articles in Adventure, seven of which were under the name "Walter Galt".[46] His story "The Soul of a Regiment" has attracted particular praise and critical attention; first published in February 1912, it was the first of Mundy's publications to be republished in Britain, appearing in the March 1912 issue of George Newnes' The Grand Magazine.[47] In June 1912, Inez sued for divorce on the grounds of Mundy's adultery; he did not challenge the accusation and the divorce was confirmed in October. As part of the divorce settlement, Mundy was forced to pay $20 a week alimony to Inez for the rest of her life.[48] Mundy moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village, which for a short time he shared with Hoffman's assistant Sinclair Lewis.[49] At this point he met the Kentucky-born portrait painter Harriette Rosemary Strafer, and after she agreed to marry him they wed in Stamford, Connecticut in August 1913.[50] The couple then moved to the town of Norway in Maine, where Mundy's friend Hugh Pendexter was already resident.[51] He involved himself in the activities of his new home, becoming chairman of the local agricultural committee and joining the Norway Committee on Public Safety.[52] Following the outbreak of World War I, in which Britain went to war against Germany, Mundy sought to attain U.S. citizenship; applying in November 1914, his request was approved in March 1917.[53]

Khyber Rifles. Watercolour by AC Lovett, 1910
In Norway, Mundy authored his first novel, For the Peace of India, which was set during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. It was serialised in Adventure under the altered title of Rung Ho! before being published by Charles Scribner in the U.S., and Cassells in the U.K. Critically well received, the book sold well in Britain although not in the U.S.[54] In August 1914, Adventure published "The Sword of Iskander", the first of Mundy's eight novelettes revolving around the character of Dick Anthony, a Scotsman battling the Russians.[55] It was in his January 1914 short story "A Soldier and a Gentleman" that he introduced the character of Yasmini, a young Hindu woman who would reappear in many of his later stories.[56] He then began work on a second novel, The Winds of the World, which told the story of a Sikh officer, Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh, who sets out to expose a German spy. Serialised in Adventure from July to September 1915, it was then published in Britain by Cassell; when Scribner declined to publish it, Mundy acquired a literary agent, Paul Reynolds.[57] Upon publication, it received good reviews.[58]
Mundy authored comparatively few short stories in 1916 as he focused on his third novel, King of the Khyber Rifles, which told the story of Captain Athelstan King of the British India Secret Service and his attempt to prevent a German-backed jihad break out against the British administration in the North-West Frontier.[59] The novel was serialised in Everybody's from May 1916 to January 1917, accompanied by illustrations by Joseph Clement Coll, a man whom Mundy praised, declaring that "there never was a better illustrator in the history of the world!".[60] The novel was then published by U.S.-based Bobbs-Merrill in November 1916 and by U.K.-based Constable in January 1917. Again, American sales were low but the book was critically acclaimed, with critics comparing it to the work of Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.[61]
In 1917 only two of Mundy's short stories appeared in Adventure; the first was a reprint of "The Soul of a Regiment", while the second was a sequel, "The Damned Old Nigger"; in a 1918 readership survey, these were rated as the first and third most popular stories in Adventure, respectively.[62] In 1917 he also serialised his fourth novel, Hira Singh's Tale, in Adventure, which was partly based upon real events. Casells published a British edition in June 1918, although for American publication in book form it was renamed Hira Singh. Talbot devoted the latter to his friend Elmer Davis, and gifted a copy to the British monarch George V, who was Commander-in-Chief of the 14th Ferozepore Sikhs.[63] The book received largely positive reviews in the U.S., although was criticised in the Times Literary Supplement.[64] Mundy felt that many reviewers had failed to understand the main reason for the book; he had meant it to represent a tribute to the Indian soldiers who had died fighting in Europe during World War I.[64]
In autumn 1918, Mundy and his wife moved to Fifth Avenue in New York City.[65] That year he serialised On the Trail of Tippoo Tib, part of a series of novelettes which he termed "The Up and Down the Earth Tales". Set in British East Africa prior to the First World War, it dealt with an expedition of three Englishmen and an American who search for a hidden cache of ivory.[66] When published in book form in June, Bobbs-Merrill renamed the story The Ivory Trail.[67] The Ivory Trail was Mundy's most widely reviewed work, receiving a largely positive reception, and resulting in him being interviewed for the New York Evening World.[68]
Christian Science and Palestine: 1918–23
In December 1918, Mundy and his wife had visited Indianapolis, there meeting with the team at Bobbs-Merrill, and it was here that he encountered Christian Science, a new religious movement founded by Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century. He was convinced to advertise his books in the group's newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.[69] Becoming increasingly interested in the movement, he became close friends with William Denison McCracken, who was the associated editor of both the Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel.[67] Mundy agreed to become the president of The Anglo-American Society, a Christian Science group devoted to providing aid for Palestine, which had recently been conquered by the British from the Ottoman Empire.[70] He also became vice president of the Society's magazine, New Earth News.[70] Spending time at the Christian Science White Mountains Camp in Tamworth, New Hampshire, it was there that he wrote The Eye of Zeitun; it included the four protagonists who had appeared in The Ivory Trail experiencing a new adventure in Armenia.[71] It was serialised in Romance from February to March 1920 before being published by Bobbs-Merrill in March under the altered title of The Eyes of Zeitoon.[72] Although pleased with the work of his agent Paul Reynolds, he switched to Howard Wheeler, with whom he felt more comfortable.[73] The book received mixed reviews and did not sell well.[74]
In December 1919, Talbot decided to travel to Palestine, to aid the Society in establishing the Jerusalem News, the first-English language newspaper in the city.[75] Departing the U.S. in January 1920 aboard the RMS Adriatic, he arrived in Southampton, before travelling to London, Rome, Alexandria, and then reaching Jerusalem in February.[76] There he became the newspaper's editorial assistant, being involved in writing articles, reporting on current events, proof reading, and editing.[77] In Jerusalem, he entered a relationship with Sally Ames, a fellow Christian Scientist whom he had first met in the U.S.[78] It was also in the city that he later claimed he had met the English writer G. K. Chesterton on the latter's visit.[79] Talbot witnessed the conflict between Arab and Jewish populations within the city, and was present during the Nebi Musa riots.[80] Having identified itself as a wartime paper, the Jerusalem News ceased publication after the transition from British military rule to the British civilian rule of Mandatory Palestine.[81]
Mundy returned to New York City in August, there informing Rosemary that he wanted a divorce, which she refused.[81] Unable to live with her, he moved into an apartment in Huguenot Park, Staten Island.[81] There he authored Guns of the Gods, a story set in Yasmini's youth; it was serialised in Adventure from March to May, and published in book form by Bobbs-Merrill in June.[82] The Times Literary Supplement accused it of having a strong anti-English bias.[82] He then wrote two novelettes for Adventure, each set in Palestine: "The Adventure of El Kerak", which appeared in November, and "Under the Dome of the Rock", which appeared in December.[83] He then developed the character of James "Jimgrim" Grim, an American who served in the British Army; the character was based upon a real individual, John Whiting.[84] Bobbs-Merrill were nevertheless not keen on the Jimgrim stories, and urged Mundy to write something else.[85] The company had repeatedly lent money to Mundy, who was now heavily in debt to them.[86]
Mundy moved to Reno, where Ames joined him; he initiated divorce proceedings against Rosemary in a Reno course. The case was eventually heard in August 1923, with Mundy alleging that he wanted a divorce because Rosemary had deserted him. She denied the allegations, and the judge dismissed Talbot's case, adding that from the evidence Rosemary herself would be entitled to sue for divorce, which she nevertheless refused to do.[87] He had continued writing, producing The Nine Unknown, a Jimgrim novel which included Mundy's first use of Indian religious ideas. Serialised in Adventure from March to April 1923, it was published by Bobbs-Merrill in March 1924 and then in Britain by Hutchinson in June.[88] At the beginning of 1923, at the recommendation of director Fred Niblo, whom Mundy had known in Africa, Mundy was hired by producer Thomas H. Ince as a screenwriter. He was initially assigned to write a novelization of the upcoming film, Her Reputation. The book was published by Bobbs-Merrill, and in England by Hutchinson under the title The Bubble Reputation.[89]
Later life
Born in London, at age 16 he ran away from home and began an odyssey in India, Africa, and other parts of the Near and Far East. Mundy spent much of his early life as a "confidence trickster" and petty criminal.[90] However, once Mundy moved to the United Statdes, and "been nearly killed in a mugging",[90] his personality changed to an "honest and upright citizen".[90] By age 29, he had begun using the name Talbot Mundy. Mundy started his writing career in 1911.
His first published work was the short story "Pig-sticking in India", which describes a popular, though now outlawed, sport practised by British forces. Mundy went on to become a regular contributor to the pulp magazines, especially Adventure and Argosy.[91]
Many of his novels, including his first novel Rung Ho!, and his most famous work King of the Khyber Rifles, are set in India during the British Raj in which the loyal British officers encounter ancient Indian mysticism.[90] The novels portray the citizens of Imperial India as enigmatic, romantic and powerful. His British characters have many encounters with the mysterious Thugee Cults.
His related Jimgrim series, which has mystical overtones and part of which is available over the web from theosophical sites, ran in Adventure magazine before book publication. Mundy was associated with Theosophy's movement, a friend of Katherine Tingley.[92] Discussing the Jimgrim books, fantasy and mystery bibliographer Mike Ashley states "The characters are fully developed...and the writing is tight and powerful".[90]
Beginning in the late 1920s Mundy wrote a number of stories about Tros of Samothrace, a Greek freedom fighter who aided Britons and Druids in their fight against Julius Caesar.
Personal life
Mundy was married five times during his life.[93]
Mundy was fascinated by mysticism, and explored various religions throughout his life; after a brief involvement in Christian Science he joined the Theosophical movement and became very interested in Buddhism.[94] Critical of the British Empire, he expressed support for Indian independence.[95] Unlike many of his contemporaries, Mundy's work has not been accused of adopting a racialist attitude toward non-caucasian peoples.[96]
Reception and legacy
Mundy biographer Peter Berresford Ellis described him as "one of the bestselling writers of adventure-fiction of his day."[97] During his lifetime, Mundy's work was often compared to that of H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, both of whose careers overshadowed his own.[98] He was best known for King of the Khyber Pass although his most critically acclaimed book was Om, and he personally considered Old Ugly Face to be his magnum opus.[99]
Mundy's work has been very influential on later writers. Those who have cited him as an influence on their own work include Robert E. Howard, E. Hoffman Price, Robert A. Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, and H. Warner Munn.[100] Other science-fiction and fantasy writers who cited Mundy as an influence included Andre Norton,[101] H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Daniel Easterman.[102] James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon was partly inspired by Mundy's work.[103]
Bibliography
Jimgrim/Ramsden
Guns of the Gods (1921)
The Winds of the World (1917)
Hira Singh (1918)
King of the Khyber Rifles (1916)
Jimgrim and Allah's Peace (1936)
The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kalil (1935)
The Lion of Petra (1932)
The Woman Ayisha (1924)
The Lost Trooper
The King in Check (variant title Affair in Araby,1933)
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb (1935)
The Caves of Terror (variant title The Gray Mahatma, 1924)
Jungle Jest (1932)
The Marriage of Meldrum Strange
Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley (1924)
The Hundred Days (1931)
The Nine Unknown (1923)
The Devil's Guard (variant title Ramsden, 1926)
Jimgrim (1931) (sometimes Jimgrim Sahib
The Gunga Sahib (1934)
C.I.D. (1932)
The Red Flame of Erinpura (1934)
Jimgrim, Moses, and Mrs. Aintree (first book publication of 1922 magazine story, 2008)
Tros
Tros of Samothrace (1925)
Queen Cleopatra (1929)
Purple Pirate (1935)
Lobsang Pun
The Thunder Dragon Gate (1937)
Old Ugly Face (1940)
Non-series
Rung Ho! (1914)
The Ivory Trail (1919)
The Eye of Zeitoon (1920)
Told in the East (Short Stories, 1920)
Her Reputation (1923)
The Soul of a Regiment (Chapbook Reprint of Short story, 1924)
Cock o' the North (1929) (variant title Gup Bahadur, 1929, UK)
Black Light (1930)
W. H.: A portion of the record of Sir William Halifax (1931) (variant title The Queen's Warrant, 1953, US)
When Trails Were New (1932)
Caesar Dies (1934)
All Four Winds: Four Novels of India (omnibus, 1932)
Full Moon (variant title, There Was a Door, 1935)
Romances of India (omnibus, 1936)
East and West (variant title Diamonds See in the Dark, 1935)
The Valiant View (Short Stories, 1939)
Winds from the East: A Talbot Mundy Reader (Fiction, Poems and Non-Fiction, 2006)
A Transaction in Diamonds: Talbot Mundy in the Pulps, 1911 (The Talbot Mundy Library, volume 1)
The Soul of a Regiment (The Talbot Mundy Library, volume 2, NYP)
In a Righteous Cause: Talbot Mundy in Adventure, 1913 (The Talbot Mundy Library, volume 3)
The Letter of His Orders—Three Short Novels from Adventure, 1913 (The Talbot Mundy Library, volume 4)
A Soldier and a Gentleman (The Talbot Mundy Library, volume 7)

Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon, 23 April 1879 – 5 August 1940) was an English-born American writer best known for his adventure fiction. Based for most of his life in the United States, he typically published in pulp magazines, also writing under the pseudonym of Walter Galt. The creator of the Jimgrim series of adventure stories, his best known work is King of the Khyber Rifles.
Mundy was born to a conservative middle-class family in Hammersmith, West London. Educated at Rugby College, he left with no qualifications and moved to Germany, where he worked for a circus. He then moved to British India, working in administration and then journalism before relocating to East Africa, where he worked as an ivory poacher and then as the town clerk of Kisumu. In 1909 he moved to New York City in the U.S., where he found himself living in poverty. A friend encouraged him to start writing about his life experiences, and he sold his first short story to Frank Munsey's magazine, The Scrap Book, in 1911. He soon began selling short stories and non-fiction articles to a variety of pulp magazines, such as Argosy, Cavalier, and Adventure. In 1914 Mundy published his first novel, Rung Ho!, soon followed by The Winds of the World and King of the Khyber Rifles, all of which were set in British India and drew upon his own experiences. Critically acclaimed, they were published in both the U.S. and U.K.
Becoming a U.S. citizen, in 1918 he joined the Christian Science new religious movement, and with them moved to Jerusalem to establish the city's first English-language newspaper. Returning to the U.S. in 1920 he began writing the Jimgrim series and saw the first film adaptations of his stories.
During his career, Mundy's work was often compared with that of his contemporaries, H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, although was deemed less famous than either. His work has been cited as an influence on a variety of later science-fiction and fantasy writers, and he has been the subject of two biographies.

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