level for Middlesex. Sturgis was granted British nationality in 1877, and he travelled extensively throughout the world in the late-1870s. Writer Sturgis's first published work as a professional writer was a short piece, "The Philosopher's Baby", in Blackwood's Magazine in 1874. His first novel was John-a-Dreams (1878), followed the next year by An Accomplished Gentleman, of which The Times said: Sturgis's biographer Elizabeth Lee writes that he specialised in "light comedies, mostly set at Eton or Oxford." In 1880 he published Little Comedies, described by Lee as "dialogues in dramatic form containing some of his most dazzling and characteristic writing". In 1882 two books by Sturgis came out: Comedies New and Old and Dick's Wandering. In November 1883, he married Mary Maud de la Poer Beresford. They had three sons. One, Mark, would later become assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland. In 1885, Sturgis wrote the libretto for Arthur Goring Thomas's opera, Nadeshda, which was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 16 April 1885. In a generally favourable review, the critic in The Times noted that Sturgis had taken the plot from an old Russian story recently adapted as a German novel, and commented, "Wherever or in what shape Mr. Sturgis may have found his materials he has treated them in a clever and workmanlike manner. His diction is not very refined or elevated, and his metre in rhymed lyrics or blank verse often defies the rules of prosody. But the incidents of the story are set forth simply and clearly, and more than one powerful situation is attained." Sturgis continued to write novels during the 1880s. They were My Friends and I (1884), John Maidment (1885), Thraldom (1887), and The Comedy of a Country House (1889). Reviewing the second of these, The Manchester Guardian said, "Readers of Little Comedies know how patiently and ingeniously Mr. Sturgis can draw what may be called the minor scoundrel – the scoundrel whose scoundrelism is so successfully concealed from the world and from himself that it is only a few people who know him to be a scoundrel at all. He has made a fresh and more audacious study of this type in John Maidment, a study audacious but successful." Sturgis's father died in 1887, leaving substantial legacies to his children. Sturgis received £40,000 tax-free, the equivalent of more than £20m in 2010 terms. Sturgis retained a house in London and divided