Charles Beadle


Charles Beadle was a novelist and pulp fiction writer, best known for his adventure stories in American pulp magazines, and for his novels of the bohemian life in Paris.
He was born at sea. His father, Henry Beadle, was a ship captain, and traveled with his wife Isabelle. Charles grew up in Hackney, in greater London, attending various boarding schools. He left home as a teenager to travel. He served in the British [South Africa Police] in Southern Rhodesia, doing duty in the Boer War. After the war he traveled up East Africa. He was in Morocco from 1908 to 1910 or early 1911, and began his writing career.
His first known published work was an article, "Our Trip Down the Zambezi," in The Wide World Magazine. His first known published fiction was the novel The City of Shadows: A Romance of Morocco. He sailed to New York City, arriving on November 14, 1916. He established himself as a pulp adventure writer, publishing authentic stories of Africa for Adventure, Argosy, Short Stories, The Frontier, etc. He also wrote sea stories.
His most successful work was probably Witch-Doctors, a four-part serial in Adventure. It was published as a book in 1922, both in the U.S. and London.
By 1920, he was living in Paris, which appears to have been his residence for most of the rest of his life. He published at least one book, The Esquimau of Montparnasse, on the bohemian scene in Paris.
He evidently returned to England circa 1939, possibly due to the war, as Charles Beadle, novelist, born Oct 27, 1881, is registered as residing at Homewood, Hazel Road, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England in the 1939 Register of England and Wales, which was conducted on 29 September 1939.
His last known published work was "Nameless Spy," a ten-page story in Short Stories. He spent his final years in Nice, France, dying on January 27, 1957.

Books

  • The City of Shadows: A Romance of Morocco
  • A Whiteman's Burden
  • A Passionate Pilgrimage
  • Witch-Doctors
  • The Blue Rib, etc.
  • The Esquimau of Montparnasse
  • Expatriates at Large
  • The White Gambit
  • Dark Refuge
  • Artist Quarter by "Charles Douglas"
  • The City of Baal
  • The Land of Ophir
  • Dark Refuge
  • A Whiteman's Burden
  • The Lost Cure

Selected articles

Selected pulp-magazine stories

  • "The Christman," Adventure, May 15, 1918.
  • "Through Rabat's Eyes", Argosy, August 2,9,16, 1919.
  • "The Alabaster Goddess," Adventure, January 1, 1920.
  • "Buried Gods," Adventure, September 3, 1921.
  • "The Land of Ophir", Adventure, March 10,20,30, 1922.
  • "The Lost Cure," Adventure, January 30, 1923.
  • "The Blond Spiders," Adventure, December 20, 1924.
  • "The Mark of the Leopard," Short Stories, May 10, 1926.