Ernest George Henham was a Canadian-British author who wrote novels at the beginning of the 20th Century about Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status, it covers .The granite upland dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The...

 and Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, England. He also published literary works under the pseudonym John Trevena.

General Background

Ernest G. Henham was born in 1870 and his writings include a series of novels based on Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status, it covers .The granite upland dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The...

, the moorland in Devon, England, where he lived much of his life. He created a pseudonym, John Trevena, for many of his books. It was probably no coincidence that the surname he chose was the original name for Tintagel

Tintagel

Tintagel is a civil parish and village situated on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom. The population of the parish is 1,820 people, and the area of the parish is ....

, the legendary location of King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

's castle.

Henham wrote thirty books, which were published between 1897 and 1927. He was considered a recluse, but often used people he encountered in real life for the characters in his work. In addition to the United Kingdom, his books were also published in the United States. The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 reviewed his books twice, on 21 March 1908 and 23 August 1914. He is perhaps best known for his trilogy: Furze the Cruel, Heather and Granite. As stated by the author in his introductory remarks to Furze the Cruel:

Almost everywhere in Dartmoor are furze, heather and granite. The furze seems to suggest cruelty, the heather endurance, and the granite strength. The furze is destroyed by fire, but grows again; the granite is worn away imperceptively by the rain....

In his introduction to Heather, Trevena writes: "Heather, which flourishes only in pure air and sunshine, and blossoms again though it is torn by winds, seems to represent the spirit of Endurance."

According to one American commentator,

...only Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

 and George Augustus Moore among contemporary novelists rival his art at its best. ... Trevena's novels are the expression of a passionate feeling for Nature, regarded as the sum of human personality and experience, in all its moods,--benign and malign, as man is benign and malign, and faithful to life in the stone as well as the flower...

John Trevena. By Violence with an Introduction by Edward J. O'Brien (Boston 1918).

List of Published Works

He published the following works under his full name:
God, Man and the Devil (1897),
Menotah: A Tale of the Riel Rebellion (1897),
Tenebrae (1898),
Pete Barker's Shanty (1898),
Bonanza: A Tale of the Outside (1901),
Scud (1902),
The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec (1903),
Krum: A Study in Consciousness (1904),
The Feast of Bacchus (1907),

The following works were published under his pseudonym, John Trevena:
A Pixy in Petticoats (1906),
Arminel of the West (1907),
Furze the Cruel (1907),
Heather (1908),
Granite (1909),
The Dartmoor House That Jack Built (1909),
Written in the Rain (1910),
Bracken (1910),
The Reign of the Saints (1911),
Wintering Hay (1912),
No Place Like Home (1913),
Sleeping Waters (1913),
Adventures Among Wild Flowers (1914),
Moyle Church-Town (1915),
The Captain's Furniture (1916),
Raindrops (1920),
The Vanished Moor (1923),
The Custom of the Manor (1924),
Off the Beaten Track (1925),
Typet's Treasure (1927).

The following works are short stories published under the surname Henham or Trevena:
A Frog Chorus(1896),
Crucifixion (1897),
A Matrimonial Adventure (1898),
How Justice Works (1898),
Under False Colours (1900),
The Cat-Eye Wife (1902),
The Mourning Oak (1911),
The Sound of Lady Brook Water (1913),
By Violence (1918).