George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones (20 August 1857 – 4 June 1906) was a British writer. He was active mainly in the science fiction genre—or as it was known at the time, scientific romance—in particular writing many future-war stories and playing a significant role in shaping that emerging subgenre. For a short period of time, he was the leading science fiction author in his home country both in terms of popularity and commercial success.
Griffith grew up with his parents and older brother, receiving home-schooling and moving frequently during his childhood due to his father's career as a clergyman. Following his father's death when Griffith was 14 years old, he went to school for a little over a year before leaving England and travelling the world, returning at the age of 19. He then worked as a teacher for ten years before pursuing a career in writing. After an initial setback that left Griffith without the means to provide for himself, he was hired by the publisher C. Arthur Pearson in 1890. Griffith made his literary breakthrough with his debut novel The Angel of the Revolution (1893), which was serialized in Pearson's Weekly before being published in book format. He signed a contract of exclusivity with Pearson and followed it up with the likewise successful sequel Olga Romanoff (1894).
Griffith was highly active as a writer throughout the 1890s, producing numerous serials and short stories for Pearson's various publications. He also wrote non-fiction for Pearson and went on various travel assignments. Among these were an 1894 publicity stunt in which he circumnavigated the world in 65 days, an 1895 journey to South America where he covered the various revolutionary movements active there at the time, and an 1896 trip to Southern Africa that resulted in Griffith writing the novel Briton or Boer? (1897) anticipating the outbreak of the Boer War (1899–1902). Griffith's career declined in the latter part of the 1890s, and he was surpassed by H. G. Wells as the favourite science fiction writer of both Pearson and the reading public. His last outright success was A Honeymoon in Space (1901), and he parted ways with Pearson shortly thereafter. With his health in decline, likely due to alcoholism, he continued writing prolifically up until his death at the age of 48.
Griffith was both successful and influential as a writer at the peak of his career, but he has since descended into obscurity. Retrospective assessments have found his works to have been timely and prescient—in particular with regard to the importance of aerial warfare—but not timeless, and he is commonly regarded as a relatively poor writer, especially when compared to his main rival, Wells. He regularly incorporated his personal viewpoints into his fiction, and anti-American sentiments expressed in this way ensured that he never established a readership in the United States as publishers there would not print his works. He was irreligious and in his youth advocated fiercely for secularism. Politically, Griffith was early an outspoken socialist, though he is believed to have gradually shifted towards more right-leaning sympathies later in his life. Socially, he has been described as embodying Victorian ideals, including social conservatism and staunch pro-British views.
George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 20 August 1857. His parents were the clergyman George Alfred Jones and Jeanette Henry Capinster Jones. The family, which also included Griffith's older brother, moved repeatedly during his childhood due to his father's career. They moved from Plymouth to Tring, Hertfordshire, in 1860, then on to two poverty-stricken parishes in the Greater Manchester area: first to Ashton-under-Lyne in 1861, and then to Mossley, where his father was appointed vicar in 1864.
As the family's financial situation did not allow for the formal education of two sons, Griffith was home-schooled, with his mother teaching him French and his father Latin and Greek. He also spent considerable time exploring his father's extensive library, which was filled with the works of authors who would later serve as Griffith's literary influences, including Walter Scott and Jules Verne. Following the death of his father in January 1872, he started studying at a private school in Southport at the age of 14. There the limits of his home-schooling soon became apparent, the lack of any mathematical proficiency in particular, but through concerted effort he progressed to being the second-best pupil in his class.
Griffith left the school after 15 months, out of economic necessity—his father had left behind less than £300, all of which went to his wife in the absence of a will—and joined a sailing ship as an apprentice at the age of 15. He deserted his ship in Melbourne after 11 weeks at sea, having found the experience highly instructive but the corporal punishment in particular gruelling. He then took various employments in Australia—chiefly manual labour, but also briefly serving as a tutor—before using his earnings to travel. He later claimed both to have received an offer to marry a Polynesian princess and to have circumnavigated the globe six times; about the latter, the science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz says that "the variety of locales for his stories would tend to substantiate this claim." He returned to England at the age of 19.
Griffith started working as a schoolmaster in 1877, six months after his return to England, teaching English at the preparatory school Worthing College in Sussex. At this time, he had no formal qualifications and studied at night to be able to give lessons in the daytime. He left Worthing to study at a university in Germany, returning a year later to teach at Brighton. He continued to study at nights to get the necessary teaching diplomas for a career in education. He started his writing career while at Brighton, writing for local papers among others. He then took a job teaching at Bolton Grammar School in 1883, and while there published his first two books: the poetry collections Poems (1883) and The Dying Faith (1884), both published under his pen name Lara. There he met Elizabeth Brierly (1861–1933); they married in February 1887 and eventually had two sons and a daughter. He passed the College of Preceptors exam the same year, thus completing his formal education in teaching, and promptly left that line of work in favour of pursuing a career in writing. He would later describe his time working as a teacher as "ten years' penal servitude".
Griffith and Brierly moved to London, where he started working as a journalist at a paper in 1888. He worked his way up to become the magazine's editor, and eventually took over as owner. At the time, Griffith was highly politically active, advocating for socialism and secularism. His political activism resulted in the paper being the target of a libel suit. Griffith decided against hiring a lawyer, opting instead to represent himself, and ended up losing the case which led to the paper going out of business. Griffith was thus unemployed, and while he continued to pen political and religious pamphlets for a while as a freelancer, it was not enough to provide a living. In 1889 he was involved in another court case against the Member of Parliament and declared atheist Charles Bradlaugh, whom Griffith and William Stewart Ross had criticized in among other publications a pamphlet titled Ananias, The Atheist's God: For the Attention of Charles Bradlaugh; Griffith won the case and was awarded £30 in damages.
A friend of Griffith's wrote him a letter of introduction to the publisher C. Arthur Pearson. He got a job at the newly founded Pearson's Weekly in 1890, initially tasked by the editor Peter Keary with writing addresses on envelopes for the magazine's competitions. He made a good impression on Keary through his skill as a conversationalist, largely owing to his background travelling the world, and was soon promoted to columnist. He carried on in this capacity for the rest of the decade.