Charles Watts Whistler was born on 14 November 1856 at Hollington Rectory in Hastings, the son of Rose Fuller Whistler and Augusta Watts. After receiving a scholarship to St. Thomas?s Hospital from 1881 he served as a surgeon for the 6th West Suffolk Volunteers until 1884 when he returned to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he took holy orders. In 1885 he was ordained an Anglican priest, in 1886 he married Georgina Rosalie Strange by whom he had four children. In his capacity as a priest he served in Lincoln and Peterborough; from 1895 to 1909 he was Vicar of Stockland Bristol and Bridgwater. It was there he began to put his knowledge of history, religion, and archaeology together with his familiarity with the local landscape to produce a series of historical novels, beginning with A Thane of Wessex, which over time became part of a multigenerational saga dealing with the history and acceptance of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England. He died in 1913.
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Read the first two chapters of A Thane of Wessex now.
William Henry Margetson (1861-1940) who studied at Dulwich College and the Royal Academy schools illustrated many of Charles Watts Whistler's books. His styles ranged from late Victorian and Edwardian. Although he seemed to specialize in paintings of pretty girls on beaches his portrait of Alfred Lord Tennyson is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Prints of many of his paintings can be had by doing a Google search of his name on the Internet.