Shiel, M.P.

The British author Matthew Phipps Shiell was born in 1865 on the little volcanic island of Montserrat in the West Indies, where his father worked as a preacher. His parents were of Irish origin and they already had eight daughters before they had him. Already when he was young, their son deleted – for reasons unknown – the last letter in his surname and called himself Shiel. He never changed the spelling officially, but all of his books were published with his name spelt Shiel.