Arthur J. Rees

Arthur John Rees (1872–29 November 1942)^[1], was an Australian-born journalist and mystery writer.

Born in St Kilda, Melbourne,^[1] he married Mary Mane Gilbert in Ballarat in 1901.^[2] He was for a short time on the staff of the Melbourne Age before moving to New Zealand, where he joined the staff of the New Zealand Herald.^[3] In April 1910 he was appointed editor of the NZ Truth,^[4] but returned to Australia in August 1910.^[5] He then moved to England, where he worked for The Times.^[6]

His first novel, The Merry Marauders, was set in New Zealand.^[7][8][9] This was followed by The Hampstead Mystery, in collaboration with Australian mystery writer John Reay Watson.^[10] By the time of his fifth novel, he had relocated permanently to England,^[11] where he lived in Worthing, Sussex.^[1] He was a friend of writer Thomas Hardy and one of the founders of PEN International.^[1] He focused on writing detective fiction, with a strong element of local folklore.^[3] His proficiency as a writer of crime-mystery stories is attested by Dorothy Sayers in the introduction to Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror, 1928. Two of his stories were included in an American world-anthology of detective stories.^[3] Some of his works were translated into French and German.

He returned to Australia briefly in 1935 for health reasons, where he criticised Australia's censorship regime.^[12] While in Australia his wife divorced him for desertion.^[13] He resumed journalistic work for the Melbourne Herald, with a series of articles on "authors I have known";^[14] he continued to contribute articles to the Melbourne Herald from London until his death in 1942.^[15]