William J. Locke

William John Locke (20 March 1863 – 15 May 1930) was a British novelist, dramatist, and playwright who also contributed to Broadway as a performer and book writer. Born in Georgetown, Demerara, British Guyana, he was the eldest child of John Locke, a bank manager from Barbados, and his first wife, Sarah Elizabeth Locke, née Johns, both of English origin. A second son, Charles Alfred Locke, was born in 1865 in Berbice, British Guyana, and later became a doctor, though he died in 1904 at the age of 39. Around 1867 the family relocated to Trinidad and Tobago.

At approximately three years of age, Locke was sent to England for schooling, where he remained for nine years before returning to Trinidad to attend Queen's Royal College alongside his brother. He won an exhibition to St John's College, Cambridge, returning to England in 1881. He graduated with honours in Mathematics in 1884, a subject he reportedly found futile and inhuman. Following Cambridge, Locke worked as a schoolmaster, holding positions at the Oxford Military College at Temple Cowley in 1889 and 1890, at Clifton College, Bristol in 1890, and as modern languages master at Trinity College, Glenalmond from 1891 to 1897. In 1890 he contracted tuberculosis, an illness that affected him throughout the remainder of his life. From 1897 to 1907 he served as secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.

Locke published his first novel, At the Gate of Samaria, in 1894, and in 1893 had produced a school edition of Murat, drawn from Alexandre Dumas père's Celebrated Crimes. Broader recognition came with The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne in 1905 and The Beloved Vagabond in 1906. Five of his books appeared on annual lists of best-selling novels in the United States. His works were adapted into 24 films, among them the 1918 production of Stella Maris starring Mary Pickford, and Ladies in Lavender, a 2004 film directed by Charles Dance and starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, based on Locke's 1916 short story of the same title, which had originally appeared in a collection entitled Faraway Stories. Four of his books were adapted into Broadway productions, two of which Locke himself wrote and which were produced by Charles Frohman.

His Broadway credits include The Morals of Marcus and the play The Witch, both associated with his 1910 Broadway activity. On 19 May 1911, Locke married Aimee Maxwell Close, née Heath, the divorced wife of Percy Hamilton Close, in a ceremony held in Chelsea, London, attended by Alice Baines and James Douglas. In the early twentieth century he lived at Corner Hall in Hemel Hempstead, England. Locke died of cancer in Paris, France, on 15 May 1930, at the age of 67.