Frank Collins Richardson was born in Paddington, Middlesex (as it was then) on 21 August 1870. Choosing subjects he knew, but with a comedic twist, his first, , was published by Chatto and Windus in 1902, and three more followed in 1903, all with a strong vein of satire and gratuitous references to whiskers. Widowed before he turned 40, his appetite for writing had all but dried up by the time he published a book of poetry, , in 1911.