Harland was an American novelist and editor who moved to London in 1889, abandoning the highly sensational novels he had been writing under the pseudonym Sidney Luska to become founding editor of 'The Yellow Book' and produce a series of critically acclaimed short story collections influenced by the Aesthetic Movement. He achieved a wider readership with his novel 'The Cardinal's Snuff-Box' (1900) and a number of further novels. 'The Royal End' was his last work which was incomplete at the time of his death in 1905 and finished by his wife according to his notes. It was published posthumously in 1909.