Thomas B. Costain

Thomas B. Costain was a Canadian bestselling author, known for his historical books that blend commercial history and fiction. He was born in Brantford, Ontario, and attended high school at the Brantford Collegiate Institute. Costain's writing career began in 1902 when the Brantford Courier accepted a mystery story from him, and he became a reporter there. He later worked as an editor at the Guelph Daily Mercury, Maclean Publishing Group, and Toronto-based Maclean's magazine. In 1920, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and worked for The Saturday Evening Post in New York City as a fiction editor for fourteen years. He also worked for Doubleday Books as an editor from 1939 to 1946 and was the head of 20th Century Fox’s bureau of literary development from 1934 to 1942.

Costain's success as a writer began in 1942 with the publication of his first novel, For My Great Folly, which became a bestseller. He wrote six books in a series he called “The Stepchildren of History,” focusing on six historical figures whose stories were not well known. His most popular novel was The Black Rose, published in 1945, which sold over two million copies in its first year. Costain's work is known for its mixture of commercial history and fiction that relies heavily on historic events. He was a meticulous researcher, and his theories about Richard III's reign and the murder of the princes in the tower were supported by documentation. Costain died in 1965 at his New York City home of a heart attack at the age of 80. He is buried in the Farringdon Independent Church Cemetery in Brantford.