Edith Maude Hull

The shadow of the east. By Edith Maude Hull

E. M. Hull (sometimes expanded as Edith M. Hull), was the pseudonym of Edith Maud Hull, née Henderson (16 August 1880 - 11 February 1947), a British writer of romance novels. She is best known for The Sheik, which became an international best seller in 1921. The Sheik is credited with setting off a major and hugely popular revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. Hull followed The Sheik with several other novels with desert settings, such as The Shadow of the East, The Desert Healer, and The Sons of the Sheik. Born Edith Maud Henderson on 16 August 1880 in the Borough of Hampstead, London, England, she was the daughter of Katie Thorne, of New Brunswick, Canada and James Henderson, a Liverpool shipowner originally from New York City. As a child she travelled widely with her parents, even visiting Algeria-the setting of her novels. In 1899, she married Percy Winstanley Hull (b. 1869), a civil engineer and later a prize-winning pig farmer. The couple moved to the Hull family estate in Derbyshire in the early 1900s. They had a daughter, Cecil Winstanley Hull. Hull was somewhat reclusive and did not seek the spotlight. She died at age 66, on 11 February 1947 in Hazelwood, in the parish of Duffield, Derbyshire.