Edgar Jepson

Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863 - 1938) was an English writer, principally of mainstream adventure and detective fiction, but also of some supernatural and fantasy stories that are better remembered. He used a pseudonym R. Edison Page for some of his many short stories, collaborating at times with John Gawsworth, Hugh Clevely and possibly Arthur Machen, long-term friends. In 1931, the newly-formed Detection Club group collaboration each wrote a chapter toward a final book. He was editor for a short period of Vanity Fair magazine, where he employed Richard Middleton, and did much to preserve the latter's memory. He was also a translator, notably of the Arsène Lupin stories of Maurice Leblanc.He was a member of the Square Club (from 1908) of established Edwardian authors, and also one of the more senior of the New Bohemians drinking club.As a literary dynasty: his son Selwyn Jepson was known as a crime writer; his daughter Margaret (married name Birkinshaw) published novels as Margaret Jepson (including Via Panama) and as Pearl Bellairs; and Margaret's daughter Franklin is the writer Fay Weldon. The Jepson domestic arrangements are commented on second-hand in Weldon's autobiographical writing.Jepson was friends with the English mystery writer Hugh Clevely and even shared the same pseudonym "Tod Claymore." They co-wrote the novel "The Man With the Amber Eyes."