Vaux, Patrick
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of Scottish author Maclaren Mein (1872-1932), whose fiction under this name comprises nautical adventures such as the non-genre Thews of England (1903); some of these tales are also examples of the Future War genre. The Shock of Battle (1906) delays the outbreak of something like World War One to 1919, with Germany ultimately losing; much of the action takes place around the British Virgin Islands. On more conventional Battle of Dorking lines, When the Eagle Flies Seaward (1907) with Lionel Yexley focuses closer to home, turning not unexpectedly (given Yexley's long involvement in naval reform) on war at sea, with battles between Britain and Germany, whose attempted Invasion is thwarted. The World's Awakening (1908; vt When the Great War Came 1909) by Vaux and Yexley writing together as by Navarchus again places well into the future the beginning of the world conflict, this time describing a 1920s the authors feel (again) will be won or lost at sea. "The Man Who Stopped a War" (June 1909 Pall Mall Magazine) adds a Yellow Peril ingredient to the mix.
Mein also published stories and essays as by N Tourneur or Nigel Tourneur; the latter is the byline for Hidden Witchery (coll 1898), whose mannered fin de siècle tales of obsessive love occasionally invoke the supernatural. [JC/DRL]
see also: The Idler.
Maclaren Mein
born Roxburgh, Scotland: 1872
died Essex: 1935
works
- Thews of England (London: Heinemann, 1903) [hb/]
- The Shock of Battle (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1906) [illus/L A Shafer: hb/]
- When the Eagle Flies Seaward (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1907) with Lionel Yexley [hb/]
- The World's Awakening (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908) writing together with Lionel Yexley as by Navarchus [hb/]
- When the Great War Came (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909) writing together with Lionel Yexley as by Navarchus [vt of the above: hb/]
collections
- Hidden Witchery (London: Leonard Smithers, 1898) as Nigel Tourneur [coll: illus/Will Mein: hb/]
- Sea-Salt and Cordite (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914) [coll: hb/]
links
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