Educated at Clifton College, the Royal College of Music and the London School of Journalism, Hichens started his career as a freelance reporter. He wrote short stories for various periodicals, such as Pall Mall, before publishing his first novel, The Coastguard's Secret, in 1885. His career really took off when he published The Green Carnation, a satire of Oscar Wilde and his associates, in 1894. He was employed as a music critic for the London World, but continued to produce novels. In 1904, he published The Garden of Allah, which was phenomenally successful. Many of Hichens' works were subsequently made into films with a reasonable level of success. His other works include An Imaginative Man (1895), The Folly of Eustace (1896), Flames (1897), Bella Donna (1909), The Dweller on the Threshold (1911), In The Wilderness (1917), Snake-Bite (1919), The Paradine Case (1933) and Harps in the Wind (1945). |
