Edgar Mittelholzer was born in British Guiana in 1909. He wrote more than twenty novels. He eventually settled in England, where he lived until his death in 1965, a suicide predicted in several of his novels. He began writing in 1929 and despite constant rejection letters persisted with his writing. In 1937 he self-published Creole Chips and sold it from door to door. By 1938 he had completed Corentyne Thunder, though it was not published until 1941 because of the intervention of the war. In 1941 he left Guyana for Trinidad where he served in the Trinidad Royal Volunteer Naval Reserve. In 1948 he left for England with the manuscript of A Morning at The Office, which was published in 1950. Between 1951 and 1965 he had published a further twenty-one novels and two works of non-fiction, including his autobiographical, A Swarthy Boy. Apart from three years in Barbados, he lived for the rest of his life in England. His first marriage ended in 1959 and he remarried in 1960. He died by his own hand in 1965, a suicide by fire predicted in several of his novels.