Edith Maude Hull (also known as E. M. Hull and Edith M. Hull) (1880-1947) was a British novelist best known for being the author of the romantic novel The Sheik which became an international best seller in 1921. E. M. Hull was the pseudonym of Edith Maude Winstanley née Henderson.[1] This novel is credited with starting the hugely popular "desert-romance" genre. Hull followed The Sheik with subsequent novels The Shadow of the East, The Desert Healer, and The Sons of the Sheik. Born Edith Maude Henderson in the Borough of Hampstead, London, on August 16, 1880. Hull dabbled writing fiction in the late 1910s while her husband was away serving in World War I. The Sheik, her first effort, was first published in England in 1919 and quickly became an international blockbuster, placing among Publishers Weekly's top ten best sellers for both of the years 1921 and 1922. Hull's volume quickly sold over 1.2 million copies worldwide. Sales further increased when Paramount released a film version of The Sheik in 1921, which launched Rudolph Valentino into cinema immortality as the greatest "lover" of the silent screen. Hull continue to write into the 1930's and 1925 novel Sons of the Sheik was also a tremendous success, as was the film version Son of the Sheik, which again starred Valentino. Ms. Hull died at age 66 on February 11, 1947, forgotten perhaps by the world that decades later still vividly recalls her landmark fictional hero. She died in Hazelwood, in the parish of Duffield, Derbyshire.[1] Source: Mao, Douglas and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, eds. Bad Modernisms. Durham: Duke University Press 2006.