William Ernest Henley was born in Gloucester on 23 August 1849, the eldest of six children of a bookseller. At 16 he lost his left leg below the knee to tuberculosis, and from 1873 to 1875 he was treated by Joseph Lister at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where he wrote “Invictus”.
He became a fixture of London literary life, editing The Magazine of Art and later the Scots Observer, which became the National Observer. He was an inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver, and his young daughter Margaret inspired J. M. Barrie’s choice of the name Wendy for Peter Pan. He died on 11 July 1903.