John G. Brandon and ‘Coutts Brisbane’: Two Australian contributors to Sexton Blake and inter-war popular fiction

This article will look at the careers of two Australian expatriate writers, John Gordon Brandon and Robert Coutts Armour, better known as ‘Coutts Brisbane’. Both were born in Australia and both travelled to England to further their careers in their mid-to-late 20s, one in the theatre and the other as an artist. They both became, however, writers of popular fiction, especially of stories for boys, both being frequent contributors to the Sexton Blake Library. Coutts Brisbane was also a pioneer Science Fiction writer. Neither returned to Australia, but their stories and books did and it can well be argued that, despite their being known today only to collectors and a few specialists, both made interesting contributions to popular culture in England (and to Australia) in the second to fourth decades of the last century.