Harold Ernest Kelly

Harold Ernest Kelly was born in London, the first son of a hatter. In the 1920s he worked as a freelance journalist. In 1931 he teamed up with a fellow journalist to start a weekly newspaper called City Mid-Week. In it, he published weekly character sketches of London types such as a postman, a bell-ringer, a beadle, etc. These sketches were later collected into a book called London Cameos (1952). In 1932 the paper was sued for libel and folded. In 1940, his first novel, Lady—Don't Turn Over, was published under the pseudonym Darcy Glinto. The following year, he published five more novels under the same name. In 1942, he was sued for Lady—Don't Turn Over, and the book was banned and pulled from circulation. In 1943 he and his brother, Hector Kelly, established their first publishing house, Everybody's Books, which they ran until 1948. In 1946, they established Robin Hood Press which produced some hardcover books in addition to his pulp paperback novels. He used a range of pseudonyms: Eugene Ascher for occultist books, Preston Yorke for science fiction novels, Lance Carson for Westerns, Gordon Holt for translating French novels into English, John Parsons for political writing, and Buck Toller for gangster novels. In 1951, the British police, magistrates, and watchdog groups such as the Catholic Association began a crackdown on smut, and in 1955, as prosecution forced the closure of other publishing houses and Kelly was summoned on two occasions for producing obscene literature, he closed Robin Hood Press. He sold the Darcy Glinto pseudonym to another author. He died in 1969 after having moved to the Canary Islands for health reasons.