Algernon Henry Blackwood was born in Shooter s Hill, South East England, in 1869. In his youth he trained as a doctor at Wellington College in Berkshire, and went on to pursue a number of careers, in areas as varied as milk farming, modelling, journalism and violin teaching. In his thirties, he returned to England from New York, where he had spent a number of years and began to write stories. "A Haunted Island" was Algernon's first significant story about the Canadian backwoods, It is set deep in the Ontario wilderness.