Sabatini (1875-1950) was an Italian-English writer of romance and adventure novels, best known for his worldwide bestsellers The Sea Hawk (1915), Scaramouche (1921), and Captain Blood (1922). In all, he produced 34 novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books, numerous uncollected stories, and several plays. Born in Iesi, Italy to an English mother and Italian father, both of whom were opera singers who then became teachers, he was exposed to many languages from a young age, living with his grandfather in England before attending schools in Portugal and Switzerland. At 17 he returned to live in England permanently and adopted this as his chosen language. After a stint in the business world, he turned to a career as a writer, producing short stories throughout the 1890s and publishing his first novel, The Lovers of Yvonne, in 1902. Mistress Wilding (also known as Anthony Wilding), an historical romance set at the time of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, appeared in 1910, but it was not until the publication of The Sea Hawk, a tale of an Elizabethan Englishman amongst the pirates of the Barbary Coast, that Sabatini achieved widespread acclaim. Scaramouche, set during the French Revolution, and Captain Blood which tells the story of the admiral of a fleet of pirate ships, confirmed his position as a bestselling author. Several of his books were adapted into films during the silent era, and some remade after sound had arrived.