Capt. W. E. Johns – The Bumper Biggles Book (1968)

About the Author

Captain W. E. Johns was the pen name used by an English author of adventure novels William Earl Johns.  He is famously known as the pioneer of the famous character, ‘Biggles’.  Johns was born and raised in Bengeo, Hertford, Hertfordshire, England, the son of Elizabeth and Richard Johns. The author’s dreamt of being a soldier.  He attended Hertford Grammar School and also attended art classes at the local art school.

Johns was never a ‘serious’ scholar, and this is evident in his novel Biggles Goes to School which was published in 1951.  During the summer of 1907, Johns served as an assistant to a county municipal surveyor for four years, and later in 1912, he served as a sanitary inspector in Norfolk.  In 1916, Johns enlisted in the military, and in 1916, he was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps and whilst serving at the Macedonian front in Greece, he was hospitalised with malaria.  Soon after his recovery, he was enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps in September 1917 and later posted back to England for flight training.  He took his initial flying training at Coley Park in Reading where he flew the Farman MF.11 aircraft.  He was then sent to a flying school at Thetford a place closer to where his family was living.  In 1918 he was appointed a flying instructor.  The aircraft of the time where unreliable and he crashed three planes in three days due to engine failure.  The first crashed into the sand, the second into the sea and then he flew over through a fellow officer backdoor.  He was later was caught in thick fog flying over trees and narrowly escaped crashing into a cliff.

After the Second World War, Johns remained in the Royal Air Force still with the rank of Pilot Officer.  His promotion to the position of Flying Officer was gazetted in 1920 and he then worked in London as a recruiting officer.

After the death of his father, Johns married the love of his life, Maude Penelope Hunt from 1882 to 1961.  Johns was a prominent author and also an editor.  During his career as a writer, he authored over 160 novels including 100 Biggles books and more than 60 factual books and novels, short stories and magazine articles.  John’s debut novel was Mossyface published in 1922 under the pseudonym William Earle.  He also worked as a newspaper air correspondent and edited and illustrated books about flying.

The first book in Biggles series was The Camels Are Coming published in 1932.  Johns continued writing the series until 1968.  At first, the novels in the series were attributed to William Earle, but later Johns adopted a more familiar name “Captain W.E. Johns.”

Johns was a regular contributor to Modern Boy magazine in the late 1930’s and wrote and edited for both Flying and Popular Flying.  Johns died while writing his last Biggles novel Biggles does some Homework which was an indicator that he intended to retire after the publication of this book.  The twelve chapters of his final story were published privately in 1997.

Apart from the famous Biggles series, Johns also published other novels which include the Steely series, a six-volume series which began publication in 1936, featuring a first world war pilot now a crime fighter Deeley Delaroy also known as Steeley.  The author also wrote a six-volume series titled Worrals series published from 1941 – 950, a series that details the exploitation of plucky WAAF Flight Officer by the name Joan “Worrals” Worralson.  This novel series was created at the request of the Air Ministry.  The series was intended to inspire young women to enlist in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

Johns also wrote a ten-volume book titled Gimlet featuring a hero called “Gimlet” King.  The author also wrote other eight books in the juvenile fiction and other eight factual books, twelve fictions for adults and several other books in aviation and treasure hunting pirates and a book on gardening.  Unusually amongst the children’s authors of the time, the author included working-class characters.  Typical were the Biggles books.  Two of the Biggles team were working-class, one of which was Ginger Hebblethwaite, the son of a Northumberland miner.  The readers were never told Ginger’s real Christian name, but he claimed himself to be of a Yorkshire origin.

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