Taffrail
Entry updated 13 September 2021. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK naval officer and author Henry Taprell Dorling (1883-1968), in the UK navy from 1897 through World War One, retiring in 1929; he served again during World War Two. He began his prolific career as an author with All About Ships: A Book for Boys (1912), almost all his work being nonfantastic stories of the sea, and came to some attention late in life when it was suggested that his early novel, Pincher Martin, O D: A Story of the Inner Life of the Royal Navy (1916), had some remote connection to William Golding's Pincher Martin (1956). Some of his tales edge into the fantastic, like The Secret Submarine: A Story of Fighting by Sea and Land (1916), or The Shetland Plan (1939), which inches into the very Near Future in its description of a planned Nazi takeover of the Islands in question. [JC]
Captain Henry Taprell Dorling
born Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland: 8 September 1883
died 1 July 1968
works (highly selected)
- The Secret Submarine: A Story of Fighting by Sea and Land (London: Blackie and Son, 1916) [illus/hb/C M Padday]
- The Shetland Plan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939) [hb/Bip Pares]
links
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