Richard Whiteing (27 July 1840 – 29 June 1928) was an English author and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

Biography

Richard Whiteing was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

the son of Mary Lander and William Whiteing, a

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

employed as an Inland Revenue Officer. His mother died early and Richard claimed to have spent much of his upbringing with foster parents. For seven years in his youth Whiteing was apprenticed to

Benjamin Wyon Benjamin Wyon (9 January 1802 – 21 November 1858) was a British engraver of seals, and medallist. Life Born in John Street, Blackfriars, London, on 9 January 1802, he was the second son of Thomas Wyon the elder. He received instruction from h ...

as a medalist and seal-engraver; meanwhile he was also educating himself on the side. In 1866, after a failed attempt to start his own medalist business, he turned to journalism as a career. He made his debut with a series of papers in the ''Evening Star'' in 1866, printed separately in the next year as ''Mr Sprouts, His Opinions''. He became leader-writer and correspondent on the ''Morning Star'', and was subsequently on the staff of the ''

Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the G ...

'', the ''

New York World The ''New York World'' was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers. It was a leading national voice of the Democratic Party. From 1883 to 1911 under publ ...

'', and for many years the ''Daily News'', resigning from the last-named paper in 1899. His first novel ''The Democracy'' (3 vols, 1876) was published under the pseudony