161 Facts About Hall Caine

Hall Caine wrote 15 novels on subjects of adultery, divorce, domestic violence, illegitimacy, infanticide, religious bigotry and women's rights, became an international literary celebrity, and sold a total of ten million books.

Hall Caine collaborated with leading actors and managers, including Wilson Barrett, Viola Allen, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Louis Napoleon Parker, Mrs Patrick Campbell, George Alexander, and Arthur Collins.

Hall Caine moved to London at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's suggestion and lived with the poet, acting as secretary and companion during the last years of Rossetti's life.

Hall Caine established his residency in the Isle of Man in 1895, where he sat from 1901 to 1908 in the Manx House of Keys, the lower house of its legislature.

Hall Caine was elected President of the Manx National Reform League in 1903 and chair of the Keys' Committee that prepared the 1907 petition for constitutional reform.

In 1929 Hall Caine was granted the Freedom of the Borough of Douglas, Isle of Man.

Hall Caine visited Russia in 1892 on behalf of the persecuted Jews.

In 1895 Hall Caine travelled in the United States and Canada, where he represented the Society of Authors conducting successful negotiations and obtaining important international copyright concessions from the Dominion Parliament.

In 1917, Hall Caine was created an Officer of the Order of Leopold by King Albert I of Belgium.

Hall Caine cancelled many literary contracts in America to devote all his time and energy to the British war effort.

Aged 78 Hall Caine died in his home at Greeba Castle on the Isle of Man.

Thomas Henry Hall Caine was born on 14 May 1853 at 29 Bridgewater Street, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, the eldest of six children of John Caine and his wife Sarah Caine.

Early in 1862 they moved to 5 Brougham Street where Hall Caine attended Windsor Street Wesleyan School, and in January 1865 the family moved round the corner to 2 Coburg Street.

When Hall Caine was nine he lost two of his young sisters within a year.

Hall Caine was to be sent to the Isle of Man to recover from his illness and grief.

Hall Caine was put on a boat to Ramsey by his father, with a label pinned on his coat and assurances that his uncle would meet him.

Hall Caine later drew on this experience when writing the scene in The Bondman in which Stephen Orry is cast ashore there.

The Hall Caine family belonged to the Baptist Church in Myrtle Street, Liverpool, presided over by the charismatic Hugh Stowell Brown, a Manxman and brother of poet Thomas Edward Brown.

Hall Caine participated in the literary and debating society Brown had established.

Hall Caine spent many hours on his own avidly reading books, notably at Liverpool's Free Library.

Hall Caine experienced what he described as the 'scribbling itch' for writing.

Hall Caine produced essays, poems, novels and overview histories with little thought of them being published.

When Hall Caine was thirteen the third outbreak of cholera occurred in July 1866.

On 10 December 1868, the day of the general election when Gladstone was to be elected as Prime Minister, Hall Caine was running to offices in Union Court, belonging to Gladstone's brother, with telegrams announcing the results of the contests all over the country.

Hall Caine was breaking the news of great majorities before Gladstone had time to open his telegrams.

Hall Caine was to meet Gladstone on another occasion when he was on Gladstone's estate at Seaforth House.

The surveyor-in-chief had not appeared one morning and a fifteen year old Hall Caine took his place.

Hall Caine had left a lasting impression on Gladstone, as two years later Hall Caine had a letter from Gladstone's brother saying the Prime Minister wished to appoint him steward of the Lancashire Gladstone estates.

Tirebuck was editor, printer, publisher and postman; Hall Caine was principal author.

Teare was the local schoolmaster, and as Hall Caine was to learn, ill with tuberculosis.

Hall Caine was inspired by Ruskin to begin writing denunciations of the social system and of the accepted interpretation of the Christian faith.

Hall Caine was to become 'an eager pupil and admirer' of Ruskin.

Hall Caine later became a frequent visitor to Ruskin's Coniston home, Brantwood.

Together with William Tirebuck and George Rose, his friends from school days, Hall Caine applied himself to establishing Liverpool branches of the Shakespeare Society, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Hall Caine was president of the society and their meetings were reported in the Liverpool newspapers.

On 16 October 1874 Henry Irving wrote to Hall Caine agreeing to his request to use his portrait in Stray Leaves a new monthly magazine he was launching.

Hall Caine was enthralled by Irving's performance and after his enthusiastic review was published in the newspaper, he was asked to reprint it as a broad-sheet pamphlet, as it was of such a high quality.

The Hall Caine family had moved into a larger house in 1873, at 59 South Chester Street, Toxteth, where Hall Caine shared a bedroom with his younger brother John, a shipping clerk.

Hall Caine became increasingly unwell from the beginning of January 1877.

Dangerously ill, Hall Caine was terrified of suffering the same fate.

Hall Caine recovered, but the disease left him with permanent lung damage, and throughout his life he had attacks of bronchitis.

Hall Caine, incensed at what he perceived as a threat to his beloved Cumbria, joined the movement, initiating a Parliamentary petition.

In 1879 Caine edited a booklet of the papers presented to the Notes and Queries Society by William Morris, Samuel Huggins and John J Stevenson on the progress of public and professional thought on the treatment of ancient buildings which was described as "'well worth reading".

At the 1879 Social Science Congress held in Manchester Town Hall, Caine read his paper A New Phase of the Question of Architectural Restoration.

Hall Caine spoke of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, its purpose, actions and achievements.

Hall Caine had joined the society the previous year and remained a member for the rest of his life.

Many newspapers reported the stories and in the wake of this adverse publicity, Tumblety recruited Hall Caine to edit his biography.

Tumblety changed lodgings, initially missing an urgent telegram from Hall Caine indicating there was a problem with the publication.

Hall Caine's response was to tell Caine to stop until he saw the proofs.

Hall Caine told a friend that his visit to Tumblety was "arduous".

Hall Caine had declined a further invitation to London, but Tumblety persisted with his invites to join him in London, later made by telegram, additionally inviting him on a planned trip to America.

Hall Caine delivered a series of three lectures on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's work and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement at Liverpool Library between November 1878 and March 1879.

Hall Caine sent a copy of the magazine to the poet Rossetti, who by that time had become a virtual recluse and was "ravaged by years of addiction to chloral and too much whisky".

Around this time Hall Caine's father was badly injured in an accident at work and Hall Caine took responsibility for supporting his parents and siblings.

Hall Caine negotiated the acquisition of Rossetti's largest painting Dante's Dream of the Death of Beatrice by Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery, representing the painter at its installation in November 1881.

Hall Caine eventually persuaded Rossetti to make the trip to Birchington, and they both arrived on 4 February 1882, accompanied by Hall Caine's sister and Rossetti's nurse.

Hall Caine stayed with Rossetti until Rossetti's death on Easter Sunday, 1882.

From 1882 Hall Caine was employed as a leader-writer on the Liverpool Mercury and was given free rein as to the subject and number of articles he wrote.

Hall Caine was born 23 April 1863, the daughter of Mary and William Chandler, a General Dealer, and grew up in Bethnal Green.

Mary went to Sevenoaks for six months to be educated, financed by Hall Caine; she had received little education as a child.

Hall Caine's reputation was immediately established, along with a foremost place among the novelists of the day.

Hall Caine was later invited to write the story of writing The Shadow of a Crime, which after its appearance in the Idler was published in 1894 in My First Book.

Hall Caine had many friends in London's elite artistic and intellectual circles.

At one supper, where the only other guest was composer Alexander Mackenzie, Hall Caine breaking the rules, brought his son Ralph with him.

Under American copyright laws the book's copyright was forfeited to Harper and Brothers, a situation unforeseen by Hall Caine, he was incensed.

Hall Caine recycled much of the material from the book in his later works, particularly in The Deemster.

Later Hall Caine attempted to suppress A Son of Hagar from both of the Collected Editions of his novels.

In 1886 Mary and Hall Caine travelled to Scotland to watch Irving when he was on tour in Edinburgh where they covertly married on 3 September under Scottish law by declaration before witnesses.

Aware of the study Hall Caine had already made of Coleridge, Robertson asked Hall Caine to contribute a brief biography of the poet to the series.

In three weeks Hall Caine wrote Life of Coleridge, published in 1887.

Hall Caine sent a copy of the novel to Wilson Barrett as he suited the main character, then set to work adapting his novel into a stage version called Ben-my-Chree, Manx for 'Girl of my Heart'.

An appreciative Hall Caine acknowledged Barratt's substantial contribution by naming him co-writer.

Hall Caine rented a pied-a-terre at Albert Mansions, Victoria Street, London.

The house had ten acres of land where Hall Caine kept two ponies he had transported from Iceland.

Hall Caine published a magazine serial in 1895 called Unto the Third and Fourth Generation.

Hall Caine's Mahomet is a four-act historical drama based on the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, written in 1890 for the actor-manager Henry Irving.

Hall Caine called the play's plot "false to history, untrue to character, Western in thought and Parisian in sentiment".

Hall Caine continued with his own version that concentrated on Muhammad's flight from Mecca and his triumphant return from Medina years later.

In common with Hall Caine he was of Manx descent, raised in Liverpool and had visited Morocco.

Hall Caine's completed play was accepted by Edward Smith Willard for production in America.

Hall Caine travelled to Tangier, Morocco, for three weeks in March 1890, researching Muslim and Jewish life.

Hall Caine became the house-guest of Ion Perdicaris, who arranged Hall Caine's nursing until he was sufficiently recovered to return to England.

The Scapegoat was written at Hawthorns immediately after Hall Caine returned home from Morocco, while he was still impeded by malaria.

Adler, certain no Jew would be allowed entry, requested Hall Caine go to Russia and Poland on behalf of the committee.

Hall Caine funded the trip himself, refusing subsidies offered by the committee.

Hall Caine carried Adler's letter, in Hebrew, to present to the rabbis in the various towns on his journey, which "secured him everywhere a most hospitable reception" and for protection against the Russian authorities Caine carried a letter from Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister.

Hall Caine managed to visit several Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement but got no further than the frontier towns as many were dying due to a cholera outbreak.

Hall Caine remained in London after the funeral working on three novellas Cap'n Davey's Honeymoon, The Last Confession and The Blind Mother, published in 1893 as one volume entitled Cap'n Davey's Honeymoon.

Hall Caine was photographed and interviewed for the monthly magazines.

Hall Caine offered it to Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who refused it as being unlikely to appeal to the Haymarket Theatre audiences.

Hall Caine bought the Greeba Castle estate in 1896 with part of his earnings from The Manxman.

Hall Caine's rented London home, 48 Ashley Gardens, in one of five red-brick Victorian mansion blocks adjacent to Westminster Cathedral, was changed to 2 Whitehall Court between Whitehall and the Victoria Embankment.

Hall Caine wrote a guidebook entitled The Little Man Island: Scenes and Specimen Days in the Isle of Man for the 1894 tourist season.

When Hall Caine wrote the Deemster in six weeks at a boarding house on the Douglas esplanade he saw these developments.

Hall Caine believed that the Island's economic prosperity lay in developing this trade.

The success of Hall Caine's novels set in the Isle of Man boosted the tourist trade.

Hall Caine was invited to join the royal couple on their yacht and to accompany them on their tour of the island the following day.

Hall Caine suggested "all authors should bind together to oppose the passing of the Act".

The Society of Authors invited Hall Caine to act as their representative in Canada and to negotiate with the Canadian Government on the 1889 Canadian Act.

Hall Caine arrived in New York 25 September 1895, accompanied by his wife Mary and eldest son Ralph, where they were met by his New York publisher William Appleton, an active in the struggle for an international copyright.

Hall Caine carried with him a letter of introduction to the Government of Canada from Chamberlain.

Hall Caine had long discussions with the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell and the Canadian Minister of Justice Charles Tupper in Ottawa.

At the request of the Canadian Copyright Association Hall Caine went to Toronto where he had talks with the Toronto publishers.

Hall Caine resolved the dispute between the Canadian publishers, the Canadian Copyright Association and English authors.

On 25 November 1895 Hall Caine presented the draft bill at the Ottawa copyright conference where all parties agreed to it.

Hall Caine followed it with a lecture tour of Scotland, a one-man dramatic performance of his novelette Home Sweet Home.

Hall Caine's play was so popular with the public that the Daily Mail published it in a thick-paper, illustrated edition.

Hall Caine directed the play, travelling to New York where he went on to deliver a series of lectures and readings there.

Hall Caine authorised a touring production with his sister Lily playing Glory Quayle and managed by her husband George Day which in 1907 was still continuously performed by up to three companies.

In 1901 Hall Caine bought Household Words, the literary magazine founded by Charles Dickens in 1850.

Hall Caine appointed his son Ralph as editor, and it was sold in 1904.

Hall Caine made many contributions including articles about Pope Leo XIII, whom he had a private audience with, the story A Maid of Mona and a serialisation of The Manxman.

Between 1902 and 1904 the Hall Caine's rented a large early Victorian house in London on Wimbledon Common, The Hermitage.

On one of two exploration trips that started from Reykjavik Caine discovered a cave about 200 feet long in the valley of Thingvellir, afterwards named "Hall's Hellin".

At the Parliamentary dinner which followed, Hall Caine was introduced "as a distinguished "skald", whose writings were widely known and greatly admired in Iceland".

Hall Caine marries Oscar after Magnus releases her from the engagement.

In September 1906 Hall Caine's dramatised version of The Bondman was produced in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Mrs Patrick Campbell playing a leading role and Hall Caine's son, Derwent, making a stage debut.

Hall Caine revised the play for Arthur Collins, moving part of the story to Sicily and creating a happy ending.

Hall Caine used material from Mahomet and The Mahdi in the novel.

Father Bernard Vaughan, known for his sermons on The Sins of Society, denounced Hall Caine's book saying "it showed startling ignorance of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice".

On 24 October 1901, Hall Caine was elected a Member of the House of Keys in a by-election as a liberal-aligned independent for the constituency of Ramsey, Isle of Man, by a majority of 267 votes.

Hall Caine sought election to the Keys after the collapse of Dumbell's Banking Company on Friday 2 February 1900.

At the General election in 1903 Hall Caine was re-elected for another five years.

In recognition of his single election speech Hall Caine was appointed vice-president of the Land Nationalisation Society of Great Britain.

In 1903 Hall Caine was elected the first president of the Manx National Reform League.

In 1904 the new House of Keys established a committee on constitutional reform, chaired by Hall Caine, that prepared the 1907 petition for constitutional reform.

Hall Caine had little time to offer to politics on a larger scale.

Hall Caine was aged 61 at the outbreak of the Great War.

Hall Caine was one of twenty-five leading authors Masterman invited to the Bureau's London headquarters, Wellington House on 2 September 1914 with the purpose of best promoting Britain's interests during the war.

Hall Caine abandoned literary contracts in America valued at 150,000 dollars in order to devote all his energies to the British war effort.

In previous years Hall Caine had edited several of these volumes already, the most recent for Queen Alexandra's charities in 1905 and 1908.

Hall Caine invited authors, artists, composers, statesmen and many notable people to present their view of events in Belgium.

Hall Caine wrote extensively in the English, American and Italian newspapers.

Hall Caine claimed that by this work and his personal influence with Italian statesmen he greatly helped bring Italy into the war on the side of the allies.

Hall Caine urged America to join the war by writing articles, mainly for The New York Times and in 1915 he gave a series of lectures in the United States but these were not well received.

In September 1915, at the conclusion of the first year of war, a series of articles featuring royalty, countries and events which included Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser and the Sinking of the RMS Lusitania that Hall Caine had contributed to The Daily Telegraph were published as a book entitled The Drama of 365 Days: Scenes in the Great War.

Hall Caine attended Nurse Edith Cavell's memorial service in St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 29 October 1915; the World War I British nurse who is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers in Brussels from all sides without distinction.

Hall Caine was recruited for the committee by the Prime Minister David Lloyd George to write the screenplay for the propaganda film Victory and Peace, designed to show what would happen in a German invasion.

Towards the end of 1917 Hall Caine was offered a baronetcy in recognition of the contribution he made to the war effort as an allied propagandist and his position as a leading man of letters.

Hall Caine declined the hereditary peerage and accepted a knighthood instead.

Hall Caine was made Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, insisting on being called, not 'Sir Thomas' but 'Sir Hall'.

Hall Caine was former part owner of the farm and suggested the establishment of the camp to the government.

Hall Caine's last published work in his lifetime was a revised version of Recollections of Rossetti, with a shortened title, to coincide with the 1928 centenary of Rossetti's birth.

Hall Caine's health broke down under the strain and the book remained unfinished.

The first authorised film of a Hall Caine novel is The Christian released in the United States by the Vitagraph Liebler Company.

Hall Caine wrote the film scenario, the first time ever that a famous author undertook a film scenario of their own work.

Hall Caine remained closely involved with the production; based in England, Hall Caine reviewed the scenario and produced drawings of the character of the buildings to be used.

Hall Caine cabled the producers after attending the British premiere at Marble Arch Pavilion, in London congratulating them.

Hall Caine was appointed as chief adviser to the film campaign department of the National War Aims Committee.

Hall Caine disapproved of the adaptation and attempted to withdraw his name from it.

Hall Caine's eyes were dark brown and slightly protuberant, giving him an intense stare.

Hall Caine had red-gold hair and a dark red beard which he trimmed to appear like the Stratford bust of Shakespeare; indeed if people did not notice the likeness he was inclined to point it out to them.

Hall Caine was preoccupied throughout his life with the state of his health.

In 1912, their son Derwent Hall Caine had an illegitimate daughter, Elin, and she was brought up as Caine and Mary's child.

In March 1932, six months after her husband's death, Mary Hall Caine died from pneumonia.

Hall Caine was an enormously popular and best-selling author in his time.

Hall Caine was "accorded the adulation reserved now for pop stars and footballers", and yet today is virtually unknown.

Allen suggests two reasons for this: the first that, in comparison with Dickens, his characters are not clearly drawn, but are "frequently fuzzy at the edges," while Dickens' characters are "diamond-clear"; and the second, that Hall Caine's characters tend to be much the same.

Hall Caine Airport was an airfield on the Isle of Man which was located near Ramsey.

The final commercial flight from Hall Caine Airport departed at 16:15hrs on Saturday 2 October 1937.

Hall Caine wrote countless articles and stories of which an account has never been kept.