BESANT, SIR WALTER (1836-1901), English author, was born at Portsmouth on Aug. 14 1836. He was educated at King's college, London, and Christ's college, Cambridge, grad uated in 1859 as i8th wrangler, and from 1861 to 1867 was senior professor of the Royal college, Mauritius. From 1868 to 1885 he acted as secretary to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1884 he was mainly instrumental in establishing the Society of Authors, a trade-union of writers designed for the protection of literary property, which has rendered great assistance to inexperienced authors by explaining the principles of literary profit. Of this society he was chairman from its foundation in 5884 till 1892. He married Mary, daughter of Mr. Eustace Foster-Barham, of Bridgwater, and was knighted in 1895. He died at Hampstead on June 9 1901. Besant's first stories were written in collaboration with James Rice. Two at least of these, The Golden Butterfly and Ready-Money Mortiboy (1872), are among the most vigorous and most characteristic of his works. After Rice's death Sir Walter wrote- All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), a stir ring story of East End life in London, which set on foot the move ment for the establishment of the People's Palace in the Mile End road. His sympathy with the poor was also shown in another attempt to stir public opinion, this time against the evils of the sweating system, in The Children of Gibeon (1886).
Other popular novels by him were Dorothy Forster (1884), Armorel of Lyonesse (1890), and Beyond the Dreams of Avarice (1895). He also wrote critical and biographical works, including The French Humorists (1873), Rabelais (1879) ; and lives of Coligny, Whittington, Captain Cook and Richard Jefferies. Besant undertook a series of important historical and archaeological volumes, dealing with the associations and development of the various districts of London, of which the most important was A Survey of London, unfortunately left unfinished, which was intended to do for modern London what Stow did for the Eliza bethan city. Other books on London (1892), Westminster and South London showed that his mind was full of his subject. The improved conditions of the literary career in Eng land are largely due to his efforts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See also Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant Bibliography. See also Autobiography of Sir Walter Besant 0902), with a prefatory note by S. S. Sprigge ; the preface to the library edition (1887) of Mortiboy contains a history of the literary partnership of Besant and Rice.