E. Phillips Oppenheim

Since he started out as a businessman, Oppenheimer traveled a lot on the content and in England, In fact, it was in the United States that he met Elsie Clara Hopkins that would become his wife. The two made their home in Leicester and had one child from the marriage despite many allegations of infidelity about Oppenheimer. In 1905, the family moved to the more rural Norfolk country to the small town of Sheringham. Country life agreed with Oppenheimer as it ushered in a period of prolific writing in which he wrote more than seventy titles having already written thirty prior to the move. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was offered a job in the Ministry of Information. He was to travel to the front alongside journalists to chronicle the war. While he came back to Norfolk after the war, the memories of Cote d’Azur had left an indelible mark on the author. Since he was making so much in book sales he decided to move to France. Selling his home in Norfolk, he moved the family to Cagnes-sur-Mer, a small town between Nice and Cannes. In France, he continued penning novels and short stories that he would then sell to US magazine publishers prior to releasing them in bookstores. His extraordinary success saw him featured on the 1927 September 12 issue of TIME magazine. He also spent a lot of time gambling, playing golf and sailing Echo I which had become one of his favorite activities.