Fred Whishaw

Who was Fred Whishaw?

Frederick James Whishaw was a Russian-born British novelist, historian, poet and musician. A popular author of children's fiction at the turn of the 20th century, he published over forty volumes of his work between 1884 and 1914.

He was a prolific historical novelist, many of his books being set in Czarist Russia, and his "schoolboy" and adventure serials appeared in many boys' magazines of the era. Several of these were published as full length novels, such as Gubbins Minor and Some Other Fellows, The Boys of Brierley Grange and The Competitors: A Tale of Upton House School. Other stories, such as The White Witch of the Matabele or The Three Scouts: A Story of the Boer War, depicted colonial Africa.

Whishaw was also one of the first translators of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the first in the English language. He had several of the Russian author's novels published between 1886 and 1888.