Background

Robert Barr was the son of a carpenter and the firstborn of eight children. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on September 16, 1850. He moved with his family to Canada when he was four years old.

Education

Barr's early education appears to have been sporadic at best, and by his early 1920s, he still lacked a high school diploma. Nonetheless he held a series of temporary teaching positions, even while attending the Toronto Normal School, where he earned his twelfth grade diploma in 1873.

Career

Upon graduation, Barr took up the position of headmaster at a school in Windsor, Ontario. He found his experiences here and at the Toronto Normal School appalling, and they provided the background for Bair’s satiric novel, The Measure of the Rule (1907).

In all, Barr’s career seemed settled, but he was already interested in making his living by the pen. A planned summer boating vacation with school chum Alexander McNeil was to provide his first entry into the world of publication.

Barr sent out this, his first literary effort, to Canadian publishers and newspapers but with no success. Since Canada seemed unreceptive to his prose, he gave the U.S. papers a try, and the Detroit Free Press ran the serialized piece, entitled “A Dangerous Journey,” from October 10 to December 12 of 1875.

Barr began his writing career under the pseudonym Luke Sharp - a name that must have tickled the humorist’s appreciation for puns when he spotted it on an undertaker’s sign. He would use it throughout the early years of his career, and revived it periodically long after he had begun publishing under his own name. Barr’s wit earned him the attention of Free Press publisher William E. Quimby, who soon offered the budding author a staff position reporting for the paper. Barr quickly abandoned his teaching career and moved with his new bride Eva Bennett to Detroit. Although he began as a general reporter, he soon began contributing regular columns of humorous pieces and editorial commentary.

In 1881, Barr was sent to London by the Detroit office of the Free Press to establish a British edition of the paper - the first overseas edition of any American newspaper. In London, Barr quickly made a place for himself within the journalist and literary circles, and during his ten-year tenure at the helm of the paper he made it a success. While Barr was tending to his managerial duties, he continued to produce short fiction, and in 1883, he pseudonymously published his first collection of short stories, Strange Happenings.

All appeared to be going well for the now forty-one-year-old Barr, but he was beginning to feel restless in his role as newspaper editor and by the early 1890s was looking for a change.

In 1891, Barr began scouting around for a partner with whom to launch a new publication, eventually settling upon Jerome K. Jerome, who had an enviable track- record of success in such ventures. Together they founded the semiannual illustrated magazine The Idler Magazine, which they hoped would appeal to the young London businessman and sophisticate. It was intended to be a primarily literary publication, and it attracted contributions from the most popular writers of the day, including Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Barrie.

The founding of The Idler also marked the true beginning of Barr’s authorial career - over the remaining twenty years of his life, Bari" would publish well over thirty books, several plays (sometimes with collaborators), and a great many stories, interviews, and essays that were published in a broad range of periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.

While most of Barr’s contributions to the magazine were published under a pseudonym or with no attribution at all, he began publishing his books under his own name, beginning with In a Steamer Chair and Other Shipboard Stories in 1892. Barr’s literary output was substantial, and he worked in several literary genres, from adventure tales to farce to social satire. But as tastes changed over time, much of his work has fallen out of favor. It is only in the genre of detective fiction that Barr is still regularly read with real appreciation; it is a genre that he began to employ to great effect in these early years of The Idler.

In the May, 1892, edition of the new magazine “Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs” appeared. This story parodied Conan Doyle’s great detective, whose own adventures had made their debut only nine months earlier in the pages of The Idler’s rival publication, The Strand. It is clear that Conan Doyle took no offense whatsoever from his friend’s parodic efforts for the two men remained close friends throughout their lives.

When Crane, Barr's close friend, was dying, he realized that he would not have time to finish his final novel, The O’Ruddy, he called upon Barr to complete the work. Although Barr was unsure of his ability to do justice to his friend’s distinctive writing style, he took on the task, and the co-authored work was published to critical praise in 1903.

Barr died from heart disease on 21 October 1912, at his home in Woldingham, a small village southeast of London.

Achievements

• Barr is known as the author of more than 20 novels. Barr had few literary pretensions or illusions. He wrote several amusing articles about his profession as author. A few of his stories of detection and the supernatural have enjoyed a later life in anthologies, and a few novels have been republished. His writings have also attracted some modest scholarly attention.
  
  Although much of Ban’s literary output has fallen out of favor, his contributions to the literature of his day and of the present should not be underestimated. As editors of The Idler, he and Jerome together provided necessary encouragement for a whole generation of writers.
  
  

Works

More photos

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  • In a Steamer Chair, and Other Ship-board Stories
  • A Rock in the Baltic
  • A Prince of Good Fellows
  • The Sword Maker
  • The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont
  • A Woman Intervenes
  • The Face and the Mask
  • Lord Stranleigh Abroad
  • The Strong Arm
  • In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories
  • Revenge!
  • In the Midst of Alarms
  • From Whose Bourne
  • A Chicago Princess
  • Over the Border: A Historical Novel Set in Time of English Civil War
  • The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont
  • 44 Mystery Stories: Collection
  • Cardillac

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Barr’s humorous fictional account of their boating trip along the shores of Lake Erie began with hypothetical absurdities related in letters written to McNeil long before their actual departure, letters that became the nucleus for what was to be his first published work.” - Alison Janice McNabb Cox
  
  “Robert Barr deserves to be remembered... for his comic inventiveness, a primary contribution to the Canadian humor tradition, earned on in the essays and sketches of Stephen Leacock and, more recently, the novels of Robertson Davies, W. O. Mitchell, and Mordecai Richler.” - John Parr
  
  “The application of his gifts to the field of mystery fiction has enriched the genre.” - Alison Janice McNabb Cox

Connections

In 1876, Barr married Eva Bennett of Toronto.

In 1897, Barr made the acquaintance of Stephen Crane, and the two soon became close friends.

Father:

Robert Barr

Mother:

Jane Watson

Wife:

Eva Bennett

Friend:

Stephen Crane

November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900

colleague:

Jerome Klapka Jerome

2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927

References

• The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• My Life and Times