The Story of the House of Cassell
after a long night's newspaper work, if he could get any-body to listen to him, till dawn. He passed from the Daily Telegraph to the Standard, and thence to the Daily Chronicle, where his old associate Fletcher was now installed.
Another writer who did good service in this branch of the firm's activities was James Grant, most prolific as a romance writer as well as a writer of history. He was proud of his Jacobite sympathies, as he was of his blood relationship, through his mother, with Sir Walter Scott. Besides having held a commission in the 62nd Regiment for three years, he had studied military science, and was therefore able to speak with some knowledge on disputable questions in "British Battles on Land and Sea," published in 1873, and in the continuation of that work, "Recent British Battles on Land and Sea," published in 1884. In the interval between the two works he had written the "Illustrated History of India," and afterwards in 1880 came "Old and New Edinburgh." In spite of his enormous productivity—he wrote as many as fifty-six romances and novels besides a large quantity of miscellaneous literature—he died penniless.
In 1895 the war books were continued by "Battles of the Nineteenth Century," the work of a large band of contributors assembled by the office editor, Frederic Whyte, prominent among them being Archibald Forbes, G. A. Henty, Major-General Bland Strange, Colonel W. W. Knollys, Major Arthur Griffiths, Captain W. V. Herbert, of Plevna fame, D. H. Parry, and E. H. Knight. A vivid description of the defence of Rorke's Drift was contributed over the pseudonym C. Stein by the late Major-General Sir J. Cecil Russell, who had been attached to Lord Chelmsford's relieving force. In 1915 Sir Evelyn Wood undertook the editorship of a new edition of "British Battles on Land and Sea," and threw himself into the task with a zest and energy amazing in a veteran of seventy-seven.
Perhaps the most notable of the historical works pro-
172
