Charles Whistler

The Reverend Charles Watts Whistler MRCS, LSA, (November 14, 1856 - June 10, 1913) was a writer of historic fiction that plays between 600 and 1100 AD, usually based on early English/Saxon chronicles, Norse or Danish Sagas and archaeological discoveries.

Life

Charles Watts Whistler was the oldest son of the Rev. Rose Fuller Whistler, who was Vicar of Ashburnham in Sussex and a Vice President of the Sussex Archaeological Society and, later, Rector of Elton, Hunts (to which cure Charles Watts Whistler succeeded, below). He was descended from the Sussex branch of the old Thames Valley family of Whistler, from which descended, also, Rex Whistler and his brother the glass engraver Sir Laurence Whistler and he was also more distantly related to the Irish branch of the Whistler family (emigrated in the 17th century) whose most famous descendant was the Anglo American artist James McNeill Whistler.

Charles Watts Whistler was educated at Merchant Taylors School, London and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, London, and was a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. After practising as a surgeon (which had been the profession of his maternal grandfather, James Watts, MRCS, of Battle, Sussex), he was ordained deacon in 1884 and priest in 1885. He then served as a clergyman in a succession of parishes: curate of Woolton, Liverpool 1884-1885; Chaplain of the Fishermen's chapel, Hastings 1885-1888, Vicar of Theddlethorpe All Saints, Lincolnshire, 1888- 1894, Rector of Elton, Hunts, 1894-1895 (his father's old parish), Vicar of Stockland-Bristol, Somerset 1895-1909 and, finally, Rector of Cheselbourne, Dorset 1909-1913.

He married, 3 March 1886, Georgiana Rosalie Shapter Strange, daughter of William James Stevenson Strange, master wool-dyer, by then retired. (His brother Alfred James Whistler married Georgiana's sister Mary Maud Strange. The two women's brother, W.R.P.Strange, had been Vicar of Stockland prior to C.W.Whistler.)

Whistler was interested in the history of England before the Norman Conquest and this is reflected in the subject matter of his prolific work as a historical novelist. His works were popular in their day, but the archaism of the language he adopted makes them less accessible to a modern readership.

Works

Summaries

Sources

External links

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Charles Whistler
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