Edgar Jepson

Edgar Jepson

Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863–1938) was an English writer, principally of mainstream adventure and detective fiction, but also of some supernatural and fantasy stories that are better remembered. He used a pseudonym R. Edison Page for some of his many short stories, collaborating at times with John Gawsworth, Hugh Clevely and possibly Arthur Machen, long-term friends.

Edgar Jepson was born on 28 November 1863 at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, the second of five sons and three daughters raised by Alfred and Margaret Jepson. Jepson’s father, a dentist, originally hailed from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, while his mother was a native of London. Edgar Jepson attended Leamington College for Boys (today North Leamington School and later graduated from Balliol College, Oxford. After completing his education, Jepson spent some years living in Barbados, before taking up residence in the King's Bench Walk area of London where he began his literary career.

He was editor for a short period of Vanity Fair magazine, where he employed Richard Middleton, and did much to preserve the latter's memory. He was also a translator, notably of the Arsène Lupin stories of Maurice Leblanc. He was a member of the Square Club (from 1908) of established Edwardian authors, and also one of the more senior of the New Bohemians drinking club.

As a literary dynasty: his son Selwyn Jepson was known as a crime writer; his daughter Margaret (married name Birkinshaw) published novels as Margaret Jepson (including Via Panama) and as Pearl Bellairs; and Margaret's daughter Franklin is the writer Fay Weldon. The Jepson domestic arrangements are commented on second-hand in Weldon's autobiographical writing.

Jepson was friends with the English mystery writer Hugh Clevely and even shared the same pseudonym "Tod Claymore." They co-wrote the novel "The Man With the Amber Eyes."

Edgar Jepson died on 11 April 1938 at his home in Hampstead, a neighborhood near central London. Jepson was survived by his son and both daughters and his former wife of thirty-four years, Frita Bisham Holmes, daughter of violinist and composer Henry Holmes.