Joseph Smith Fletcher was born on the 7th February 1863 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. At 8 months of age his clergyman father died and thereafter he was brought up by his grandmother on a farm near Pontefract.After an education at Silcoates school in Wakefield he studied law for a short time and then, aged 20, entered journalism as a sub-editor in London before returning to Yorkshire to work for various other papers.His first published book, in 1879, was poetry. Thus began a very prolific career as a writer but it was not until 1914 that Fletcher wrote the first of over a hundred detective novels. Across his career he wrote in excess of 230 books across poetry, fiction, non-fiction as well as the many short stories for the periodicals of the day.In 1927 he married the Irish writer Rosamund Langbridge with whom he had a son.J S Fletcher died in Surrey on the 30th of January 1935. He was 71.