Early life George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones was born in
Plymouth, Devon, on 20 August 1857. His parents were the clergyman George Alfred Jones and Jeanette Henry Capinster Jones. They moved from Plymouth to
Tring, Hertfordshire, in 1860, then on to two poverty-stricken parishes in the
Greater Manchester area: first to
Ashton-under-Lyne in 1861, and then to
Mossley, where his father was appointed
vicar in 1864. He also spent considerable time exploring his father's extensive library, which was filled with the works of authors who would later serve as Griffith's literary influences, including
Walter Scott and
Jules Verne. Griffith left the school after 15 months, out of economic necessity—his father had left behind less than £300, all of which went to his wife in the absence of a will—and joined a sailing ship as an
apprentice at the age of 15. He later claimed both to have received an offer to marry a
Polynesian princess He returned to England at the age of 19. At this time, he had no formal qualifications and studied at night to be able to give lessons in the daytime. , whom Griffith worked for throughout the 1890s A friend of Griffith's wrote him a
letter of introduction to the publisher
C. Arthur Pearson. The
future war genre had been popular since the publication of
George Tomkyns Chesney's novella "
The Battle of Dorking" (1871), and the rival magazine
Black & White had just had a major success in the genre with the
serialized novel
The Great War of 1892 (1892) by
Philip Howard Colomb. The London-based Tower Publishing Company quickly secured the book rights to
The Angel of the Revolution, publishing an abridged
hardcover edition in October 1893. The book version was likewise a success, receiving rave reviews and becoming a
best-seller; it was printed in six editions within a year and at least eleven editions in total, and a review in
The Pelican declared Griffith to be "a second Jules Verne". Griffith accomplished the feat in 65 days, starting on 12 March 1894 and finishing on 16 May. Pearson tasked Griffith with writing a new future-war serial to boost sales of
Short Stories, a magazine he had acquired in mid-1893. Moskowitz speculates that this could have happened during this assignment. During the second half of the 1890s, Wells also supplanted Griffith as the best-selling science fiction writer, and the one most acclaimed by the public. During his time there, he wrote
A Honeymoon in Space, a scientific romance novel about a newlywed couple
traversing the Solar System. In a first for Griffith, it was serialized in the upmarket ''Pearson's Magazine
—albeit in an abridged form—in six parts under the title Stories of Other Worlds'', January–July 1900. Pearson published the full story in book format under Griffith's original title in 1901. It was the last outright success of Griffith's career. Following the turn of the century, Griffith and Pearson parted ways. Griffith's last piece of fiction writing published by Pearson was "
The Raid of Le Vengeur" in ''Pearson's Magazine
in February 1901 and his last non-fiction was an essay in Pearson's Magazine
in November 1902. Griffith nevertheless continued writing prolifically, though he did not meet with much success. In 1901 he wrote two novels dealing with the occult—a subject he had previously touched upon in The Destined Maid in 1898—Denver's Double, which deals with hypnotism and spiritual possession, and Captain Ishmael'', a story about an immortal that features the legendary
Wandering Jew as a side character. They were published by F. V. White in April and
Hutchinson in October, respectively; neither was serialized. Supernatural and otherwise fanciful elements also appeared in a couple of short stories in the later years of Griffith's career: "
The Lost Elixir" about an
undead mummy, published in
The Pall Mall Magazine in October 1903, and "
From Pole to Pole" about a tunnel connecting the Earth's poles, published in
The Windsor Magazine in October 1904. Both were included in the Griffith short story collection "The Raid of Le Vengeur and Other Stories", edited by Moskowitz and published in 1974.
Final years The twilight years of Griffith's career were marked by a return to the future war genre, a great quantity of such stories being produced towards the end of his life.
The Lake of Gold, where the discovery of the titular reservoir results in a US syndicate conquering Europe, became the only one of Griffith's works to be serialized in a US magazine when it appeared in
Argosy in eight instalments between December 1902 and July 1903, and was published in book format by White in 1903.
The World Masters, where the US similarly establishes dominance by what
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes as a
disintegrator ray, was published by
John Long Ltd in 1903.
The Stolen Submarine, about the then-ongoing
Russo-Japanese War, was published by White in 1904. The year 1904 also saw the publication by John Long of
A Criminal Croesus, where a war of South American unification is financed by a
lost race that
lives underground. Griffith's health was failing. With his finances likewise deteriorating as a result of decreasing book sales after 1904, he moved with his family to
Port Erin on the
Isle of Man where the
cost of living was lower. He continued to write in spite of his worsening condition. Thus, when
The Great Weather Syndicate—wherein
weather control is weaponized—was published by White in May 1906, Griffith was largely confined to his bed. Griffith's last novel was
The Lord of Labour, which he dictated on his deathbed against his doctor's advice. The story concerns a war between Britain and Germany, armed respectively with rifles firing explosive
radium pellets and a ray that turns metals brittle. It was not published until nearly five years after his death, by White on 11 February 1911, the last of several posthumous works by Griffith.
Death Griffith died at his home in Port Erin on 4 June 1906, at the age of 48. The
death certificate listed his
cause of death as
cirrhosis of the liver. Moskowitz notes that
malaria can have a similar clinical presentation; Griffith had contracted malaria in Hong Kong, and the
literary biographer Peter Berresford Ellis writes that it at least contributed to his deteriorating condition. Moskowitz nevertheless concludes—primarily from Griffith's self-description as "a waterlogged derelict"—that his early death was most likely the result of
alcoholism. As corroborating evidence, Moskowitz cites an increasing prominence of alcohol in Griffith's later works and the appearance of something akin to
Alcoholics Anonymous in one of his books. Stableford, who similarly concludes that Griffith likely started consuming alcohol excessively no later than the mid-1890s, additionally points to what he describes as "a seemingly alcoholic quality about the garrulous fluency of his later works". == Legacy ==