The Beautiful Wretch

William Black (1841-1898) was a novelist born in Glasgow. He was educated with a view to being a landscape painter, a training that clearly influenced his literary life, and as a writer he became celebrated for the detailed and atmospheric descriptions of landscapes and seascapes in novels such as White Wings: A Yachting Romance (1880). At the age of twenty-three he went to London, after some experience in Glasgow journalism, and joined the staff of The Morning Star, and, later, the Daily News, of which journal he became assistant-editor. He wrote a weekly serial in The Graphic. In the Austro- Prussian War he acted as a war correspondent. His first novel, James Merle appeared in 1864, and met with little success. Black later disowned the novel and reputedly bought up copies to destroy them. It was the publication of A Daughter of Heth in 1871 that at once established his popularity. His other works include: Goldsmith (1878), Macleod of Dare (1879), The Beautiful Wretch (1881), Sunrise (1881) and Prince Fortunatus (1890).