John Oxenham

OXENHAM, John. b. Manchester, 12 November 1852; d. Worthing, Sussex, 23 January 1941. ‘John Oxenham’ was the pseudonym of William Arthur Dunkerley, the name taken from a character in Charles Kingsley’s* novel Westward Ho! (1855). Dunkerley was educated at Old Trafford School and the University of Manchester. He worked in his father’s business as a wholesale provision merchant, with periods in France and the USA. His interest in writing was stimulated by a friendship with Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat (1889), with whom he collaborated and founded a magazine, The Idler, in 1892. He then began writing novels and poems. He became a prolific and very successful writer: his...