Thomas B. Costain
Encyclopedia
Thomas Bertram Costain was a Canadian
journalist
who became a best-selling author of historical novel
s at the age of 57.
, Ontario to John Herbert Costain and Mary Schultz. He attended high school there as well as at the Brantford Collegiate Institute
. Before graduating from high school he had written four novels, one of which was a 70,000 word romance about Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange
. These early novels were rejected by publishers.
His first writing success came in 1902 when the Brantford Courier accepted a mystery story from him, and he became a reporter there (for five dollars a week). He was an editor at the Guelph Daily Mercury between 1908 and 1910. He married Ida Randolph Spragge (1888–1975) in York
, Ontario on January 12, 1910. The couple had two children, Molly (Mrs. Howard Haycraft) and Dora (Mrs. Henry Darlington Steinmetz). Also in 1910, Costain joined the Maclean Publishing Group where he edited three trade journals. Beginning in 1914, he was a staff writer for and, from 1917, editor of Toronto-based Maclean's
magazine. His success there brought him to the attention of The Saturday Evening Post
in New York City
where he was fiction editor for fourteen years.
In 1920 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He also worked for Doubleday Books as an editor 1939-1946. He was the head of 20th Century Fox
’s bureau of literary development (story department) from 1934 to 1942.
In 1940, he wrote four short novels but was “enough of an editor not to send them out”. He next planned to write six books in a series he called “The Stepchildren of History”. He would write about six interesting but unknown historical figures. For his first, he wrote about the seventeenth century pirate John Ward aka Jack Ward. In 1942, he realized his longtime dream when this first novel For My Great Folly was published, and it became a bestseller with over 132,000 copies sold. The New York Times reviewer stated at the end of the review "there will be no romantic-adventure lover left unsatisfied." In January 1946 he "retired" to spend the rest of his life writing, at a rate of about 3,000 words a day.
Raised as a Baptist
, he was reported in the 1953 Current Biography to be an attendant of the Protestant Episcopal Church
. He was described as a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered man with a pink and white complexion, clear blue eyes, and a slight Canadian accent. He was white-haired by the time he began to write novels. He loved animals and could not even kill a bug (but he also loved bridge, and he did not extend the same policy to his partners). He also loved movies and the theatre (he met his future wife when she was performing Ruth in the The Pirates of Penzance
).
Costain's work is a mixture of commercial history (such as The White and The Gold, a history of New France
to around 1720) and fiction that relies heavily on historic events (one review stated it was hard to tell where history leaves off and apocrypha
begins). His most popular novel was The Black Rose (1945), centred in the time and actions of Bayan of the Baarin
also known as Bayan of the Hundred Eyes. Costain noted in his foreword that he initially intended the book to be about Bayan and Edward I, but became caught up in the legend of Thomas a Becket's parents: an English knight married to an Eastern girl. The book was a selection of the Literary Guild with a first printing of 650,000 copies and sold over two million copies in its first year.
His research led him to believe that Richard III
was a great monarch tarred by conspiracies, after his death, with the murder of the princes in the tower
. Costain supported his theories with documentation, suggesting that the real murderer was Henry VII
.
Costain died in 1965 at his New York City home of a heart attack at the age of 80. He is buried in the Farringdon Independent Church Cemetery in Brantford.
in May 1952 and he received a gold medallion from the Canadian Club of New York in June 1965. The Thomas B. Costain public elementary school (1953) and the Thomas B. Costain – S.C. Johnson Community Centre (2002) in Brantford are named in his honour.
His daughter Molly Costain Haycraft
became a writer of historical novels.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
who became a best-selling author of historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
s at the age of 57.
Life
Costain was born in BrantfordBrantford, Ontario
Brantford is a city located on the Grand River in Southern Ontario, Canada. While geographically surrounded by the County of Brant, the city is politically independent...
, Ontario to John Herbert Costain and Mary Schultz. He attended high school there as well as at the Brantford Collegiate Institute
Brantford Collegiate Institute
Brantford Collegiate Institute and Vocational School, also known as simply "Brantford Collegiate Institute" or "BCI", is a secondary school in the city of Brantford...
. Before graduating from high school he had written four novels, one of which was a 70,000 word romance about Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange
Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange
Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange was sovereign Prince of Orange from 1618, on the death of his eldest half brother, Philip William, Prince of Orange,...
. These early novels were rejected by publishers.
His first writing success came in 1902 when the Brantford Courier accepted a mystery story from him, and he became a reporter there (for five dollars a week). He was an editor at the Guelph Daily Mercury between 1908 and 1910. He married Ida Randolph Spragge (1888–1975) in York
York, Ontario
York is a dissolved municipality in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Geographically, it is located northwest of Old Toronto, southwest of North York and east of Etobicoke, where it is bounded by the Humber River. Formerly a separate city, it was one of six municipalities that amalgamated in 1998 to form...
, Ontario on January 12, 1910. The couple had two children, Molly (Mrs. Howard Haycraft) and Dora (Mrs. Henry Darlington Steinmetz). Also in 1910, Costain joined the Maclean Publishing Group where he edited three trade journals. Beginning in 1914, he was a staff writer for and, from 1917, editor of Toronto-based Maclean's
Maclean's
Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...
magazine. His success there brought him to the attention of The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where he was fiction editor for fourteen years.
In 1920 he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He also worked for Doubleday Books as an editor 1939-1946. He was the head of 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
’s bureau of literary development (story department) from 1934 to 1942.
In 1940, he wrote four short novels but was “enough of an editor not to send them out”. He next planned to write six books in a series he called “The Stepchildren of History”. He would write about six interesting but unknown historical figures. For his first, he wrote about the seventeenth century pirate John Ward aka Jack Ward. In 1942, he realized his longtime dream when this first novel For My Great Folly was published, and it became a bestseller with over 132,000 copies sold. The New York Times reviewer stated at the end of the review "there will be no romantic-adventure lover left unsatisfied." In January 1946 he "retired" to spend the rest of his life writing, at a rate of about 3,000 words a day.
Raised as a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
, he was reported in the 1953 Current Biography to be an attendant of the Protestant Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
. He was described as a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered man with a pink and white complexion, clear blue eyes, and a slight Canadian accent. He was white-haired by the time he began to write novels. He loved animals and could not even kill a bug (but he also loved bridge, and he did not extend the same policy to his partners). He also loved movies and the theatre (he met his future wife when she was performing Ruth in the The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
).
Costain's work is a mixture of commercial history (such as The White and The Gold, a history of New France
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...
to around 1720) and fiction that relies heavily on historic events (one review stated it was hard to tell where history leaves off and apocrypha
Apocrypha
The term apocrypha is used with various meanings, including "hidden", "esoteric", "spurious", "of questionable authenticity", ancient Chinese "revealed texts and objects" and "Christian texts that are not canonical"....
begins). His most popular novel was The Black Rose (1945), centred in the time and actions of Bayan of the Baarin
Bayan of the Baarin
Bayan of the Baarin , also known as "Bayan chingsang" or, to Marco Polo, as "Bayan Hundred Eyes" , was a Mongol general...
also known as Bayan of the Hundred Eyes. Costain noted in his foreword that he initially intended the book to be about Bayan and Edward I, but became caught up in the legend of Thomas a Becket's parents: an English knight married to an Eastern girl. The book was a selection of the Literary Guild with a first printing of 650,000 copies and sold over two million copies in its first year.
His research led him to believe that Richard III
Richard III of England
Richard III was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty...
was a great monarch tarred by conspiracies, after his death, with the murder of the princes in the tower
Princes in the Tower
The Princes in the Tower is a term which refers to Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York. The two brothers were the only sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville alive at the time of their father's death...
. Costain supported his theories with documentation, suggesting that the real murderer was Henry VII
Henry VII of England
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....
.
Costain died in 1965 at his New York City home of a heart attack at the age of 80. He is buried in the Farringdon Independent Church Cemetery in Brantford.
Awards and honours
He received a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt) degree from the University of Western OntarioUniversity of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
in May 1952 and he received a gold medallion from the Canadian Club of New York in June 1965. The Thomas B. Costain public elementary school (1953) and the Thomas B. Costain – S.C. Johnson Community Centre (2002) in Brantford are named in his honour.
His daughter Molly Costain Haycraft
Molly Costain Haycraft
Molly Costain Haycraft is a Canadian author. She was born in Toronto, Canada, and spent her childhood in Philadelphia, where her father, the well-known novelist Thomas B. Costain, was an editor for The Saturday Evening Post. She is the author of several novels about women in English royal history...
became a writer of historical novels.
Novels
- For My Great Folly (1942)
- Joshua: Leader of a United People - A Realistic Biography (1943) - with Rogers MacVeagh
- Ride With Me (1944)
- The Black RoseThe Black RoseThe Black Rose is a 1950 20th Century-Fox film starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles, loosely based on Thomas B. Costain's book. It was filmed partly on location in England and Morocco which substitutes for the Gobi Desert of China...
(1945) - The Moneyman (1947)
- High Towers (1949)
- Son of a Hundred Kings (1950)
- The Silver ChaliceThe Silver ChaliceThe Silver Chalice is a 1952 English language historical novel by Thomas B. Costain. It is the fictional story of the making of a silver chalice to hold the Holy Grail and includes 1st century biblical and historical figures: Luke, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon Magus and his companion Helena, and the...
(1952) - The Tontine (1955)
- Below the Salt (1957)
- The Darkness And The Dawn (1959) (on Attila the HunAttila the HunAttila , more frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his reign he was one of the most feared...
) - The Last Love (1963)
Non-fiction
- The White and the Gold (1954)
- The Chord of Steel: The Story of the Invention of the Telephone (1960)
- William the Conqueror a Landmark book (1959)
- The Plantagenets series (also known as The Pageant of England)
- The Conquering Family (1949)
- The Magnificent Century (1951)
- The Three Edwards (1958)
- The Last Plantagenets (1962)
Other works
- Stories to Remember (1956) a selection of novels and short stories chosen by Costain and John Beecroft. First of 3 collections.
- More Stories to Remember (1958) with John Beecroft
- Thirty Stories (1961) with John Beecroft
- Come Read with Me (1965), a selection of short stories and novellas
Films from his works
- The Black RoseThe Black RoseThe Black Rose is a 1950 20th Century-Fox film starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles, loosely based on Thomas B. Costain's book. It was filmed partly on location in England and Morocco which substitutes for the Gobi Desert of China...
(1950) starring Tyrone PowerTyrone PowerTyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,... - Son of a Hundred Kings (1950) CBCCanadian Broadcasting CorporationThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
mini-series - The Silver ChaliceThe Silver Chalice (film)The Silver Chalice is a 1954 historical epic film from Warner Bros., based on Thomas B. Costain's 1952 novel of the same name.-Plot:A Greek artisan is commissioned to cast the cup of Christ in silver and sculpt around its rim the faces of the disciples and Jesus himself. He travels to Jerusalem and...
(1954) starring Paul NewmanPaul NewmanPaul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
(film debut) - The Chord of Steel (1960) CBCCanadian Broadcasting CorporationThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
seven episode mini-series aired in 1964
External links
- Thomas Bertram Costain at The Canadian EncyclopediaThe Canadian EncyclopediaThe Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada. It is available online, at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia is available in both English and French and includes some 14,000 articles in each language on a wide variety of subjects including history, popular culture, events, people,...
- Brief biography
- Brantford Public Library