terms). During the next four years it sold nearly 35,000 copies. Excellent reviews and good sales helped establish Russell's writing pattern. The scholar John Sutherland wrote during 1989 that The Wreck of the Grosvenor was "the most popular mid-Victorian melodrama of adventure and heroism at sea." It remained popular and widely read in illustrated editions well into the first half of the 20th century. It was Russell's best-selling and best-known novel, though at the time of its first appearance in 1877, it published anonymously. Russell noted in a preface, the novel "found its first and best welcome in the United States," and commented elsewhere that his work was greeted with more enthusiasm in the United States than in Britain. The biographer G S Woods lists among Russell's best sea novels The Frozen Pirate (1877), A Sailor's Sweetheart (1880), An Ocean Tragedy (1881), The Death Ship (1888), List, ye Landsmen (1894) and Overdue (1903). According to Woods, Russell wrote a total of 57 novels. Additionally, he published collections of short stories and newspaper articles; a volume of historical essays; popular biographies (William Dampier and Admirals Nelson and Collingwood); and a collection of verses. Among authors, Russell is widely admired and revered. Algernon Swinburne described Russell as "the greatest master of the sea, living or dead." Herman Melville admired Russell's work, and dedicated his book John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) to him. Russell reciprocated, dedicating An Ocean Tragedy to Melville during 1890. Despite their mutual regard, neither writer influenced the other's style, and it is Melville's works that have proved the more enduring. Arthur Conan Doyle made Dr. John Watson an admirer in The Five Orange Pips in which he was "deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea stories" while temporarily back in 221B Baker Street. Particularly during later years, when arthritis made it difficult for him to hold a pen, Russell dictated his work to a secretary. According to The Manchester Guardian, "like most dictated work, these books have a rather inflated, rhetorical, literary manner." Despite this criticism, the paper concluded: According to Woods, "His descriptions of storms at sea and atmospheric effects were brilliant pieces of word painting, but his characterization was often indifferent, and his plots were apt to become monotonous." Among the praise Russell received from his colleagues, he is also far revered by his contemporaries such as Sir Edwin Arnold who said, "he was the