Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838–1903) was a British novelist, playwright, printer and journalist. He didn't have formal schooling but trained as a printer at a newspaper office at age 14. He immigrated to Australia in 1854 after a row with his father over religion and spent seven years on the goldfields. He settled in New Zealand, where he established his successful literary career and became assistant editor and part proprietor of the Otago Daily Times of Dunedin. Eventually he returned to England to devote himself to writing.
In a brief biography of Farjeon, Sir George Fenwick described him as being "The quick, alert, restless type, of rather short stature, with beady black eyes." His daughter, Eleanor, herself an author of children's books, once described her father as "Exuberant, impetuous and extravagant...His mood (when it wasn't irascible) was overflowingly generous."
His literary output was prodigious, writing nearly sixty novels in thirty-five years, most with mystery and adventure themes that drew on his colonial experiences in Australia and New Zealand. His books were bestsellers in their day, with the novel Grif in its seventeenth edition as of 1898, but they were gradually forgotten. Widow Cherry: or, The Mystery of Roaring Meg, is short enough to be a novella and first appeared in Tinsley's magazine. It was eventually bound into a volume of three Farjeon Christmas-themed stories, although the Christmas element isn't very present in Widow Cherry.
The story is set in Australia in a mining town named after the river that flows nearby, Roaring Meg. Young Jack Thumbwood has come to town to stake his claim to a potential mine, but needs the help of an elderly Cornish miner nicknamed Star-by-night and a friend from the old country, Fred Mellon, who Jack convinces to join him. From there, the premise is a fairly straightforward tale of romantic suspense when Jack is arrested for the murder of his young love's sister, and Fred has to investigate and defend him, with the help of his own love interest, the "Widow Cherry."
The denouement, or turning point for the murderer, relies upon his guilty conscience as he sees a bottle of his favorite liquor, Red Rum, reflected backward in a window. I haven't seen any quotes from Stephen King that he had ever read this novel before writing The Shining, but it was a bit of fun to find it buried in an obscure book from 1878.
Comments