Gilbert Parker

Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker, 1st Baronet (23 November 1862 – 6 September 1932), known as Gilbert Parker, Canadian novelist and British politician, was born at Camden East, Addington, Ontario, the son of Captain Joseph Parker, R.A.

He was educated as a teacher in Ottawa and taught at Marsh Hill and Bayside schools in Hastings County before becoming a teacher at the Ontario Institute for the Deaf and Dumb (in Belleville, Ontario) in 1882. From there he went on to lecture at Trinity College, federated with the University of Toronto. In 1886, he went to Australia, and for a while became associate editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He also traveled extensively in the Pacific, Europe, Asia, Egypt, the South Sea Islands and subsequently in northern Canada. In the early nineties, he began to gain a growing reputation in London as a writer of romantic fiction.