WHYTE-MELVILLE, GEORGE JOHN English novelist, son of John Whyte-Melville of Strathkinness, Fifeshire, and grandson on his mother's side of the 5th duke of Leeds, was born on June 19, 1821. Whyte-Melville received his education at Eton, entered the army in 1839, became captain in the Coldstream Guards in 1846 and retired in 1849. After trans lating Horace (1850) in fluent and graceful verse, he published his first novel, Digby Grand, in 1853. The unflagging verve and inti mate technical knowledge with which he described sporting scenes and sporting characters at once drew attention to him as a novelist with a new vein. He was the laureate of fox-hunting; all his most popular and distinctive heroes and heroines, Digby Grand, Tilbury Nogo, the Honourable Crasher, Mr. Sawyer, Kate Coventry, Mrs.
Lascelles, are or would be mighty hunters. Tilbury Nogo was contributed to the Sporting Magazine in 1853 and published sepa rately in 1854. He showed in the adventures of Mr. Nogo—and it became more apparent in his later works—that he had a surer hand in humorous narrative than in pathetic description. He lost his life in the hunting-field on Dec. 5, 1878.
The Gladiators was perhaps the most famous of his numerous historical novels. He also wrote Songs and Verses (1869) and a metrical Legend of the True Cross (1873).