Harold Edward Bindloss was an English novelist who published a number of adventure tales set in western Canada, as well as in England and West Africa. His writing was mostly based on his own experiences as a seaman, dock worker, farmer, and planter. Bindloss was born on April 6, 1866 in Wavertree, Liverpool, England. The eldest son of Edward Williams Bindloss, an iron dealer who employed six men at the time of the 1881 census. Bindloss has three sisters and four brothers. He spent several years at sea and in several colonies, most notably in Africa, before returning to England in 1896, his health ravaged by malaria. Bindloss was missing from the family home in 1881, but the 1891 census showed him living at home and working as an iron-merchant's clerk, most likely for his father. He appears to have started out as a clerk in a shipping office, but this did not suit his adventurous nature, and he later became a farmer in Canada, a sailor, a dock worker, and a planter. He returned to England in 1896, likely from West Africa, afflicted with malaria.