Stacpoole, Henry de Vere (1863–1951), doctor and novelist, was born 9 April 1863 at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin, the youngest child and only son of Rev. William Church Stacpoole, clergyman and director of Kingstown school, and his wife, Charlotte Augusta (née Mountjoy), of Sally Park, Tallaght, Co. Dublin. The oldest of his three sisters was Florence Stacpoole (qv), a writer on general health and housekeeping. Rev. William Stacpoole died in 1870 and the children were raised by their mother, spending some time in the south of France in an attempt to improve Henry's chronic bronchitis. The experience instilled a love of travel which lasted for the rest of his life. He returned to Ireland to attend the public school in Portarlington, after which he went to Malvern College in Worcestershire. He studied medicine at St George's and St Mary's hospitals, London, qualifying in 1891, and worked for the next few years as a ship's doctor.
Stacpoole simultaneously pursued a literary career, and his first published work was a poem published in Belgravia. He produced several novels during the 1890s (The intended, 1894; Pierrot, 1896; Death, the knight and the lady, 1897; The rapin, 1899; The doctor, 1899), none of which succeeded commercially, and he continued to earn his living as a doctor, based in a small practice in Somerset, England. In 1907 he married Margaret Ann, a writer, the daughter of William Robson of Tynemouth, and they settled in Stebbing, Essex, where Stacpoole served as a justice of the peace. His literary fortunes gradually improved: he attracted favourable attention with the romantic comedy Fanny Lambert (1905), and achieved his first real financial success with The crimson azaleas (1907), a novel set in Japan. This was quickly followed by the work for which he is best remembered, The blue lagoon (1908), a highly popular tale concerning the adventures of two children shipwrecked on a Pacific island. It was reprinted twenty-three times in the following twelve years, and was adapted for the stage (Prince of Wales Theatre, London, 1920) and the screen (1923, 1949, 1980). The blue lagoon initiated a literary vogue for island romances and a number of imitative works. Stacpoole himself wrote two sequels, The garden of god (1923) and The gates of morning (1925).
Stacpoole's literary career was thereafter assured. He continued to write prolifically, often on a tropical theme (drawing on his experience as a ship's doctor), but he also produced poetry (The North Sea, 1915), several collections of short stories, a biography of the fifteenth-century French poet François Villon (1916), translations from Sappho and Villon (In a Bonchurch garden, 1937), and two autobiographical volumes (Men and mice, 1942; More men and mice, 1945). A trip to Africa resulted in The pools of silence (1909), a powerful condemnation of Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Several of his novels are set in Ireland, notably Patsy (1908), Garryowen: the story of a racehorse (1910), and Father O'Flynn (1914), which related the adventures of a socially adept priest and was dedicated to both Edward Carson (qv) and John Redmond (qv). In general Stacpoole tended to avoid political commentary on Ireland, however, and he distanced himself from the Irish literary revival. In all he produced more than sixty books, mostly fiction, notable for their vividly described settings and gentle humour. His work was translated into several languages, and The blue lagoon in particular has proved enduringly popular (it was reprinted once again in 2003).
Stacpoole and his wife moved in 1922 to the village of Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. He had a passionate love of nature and botany, and founded the Penguin Club for the study and protection of sea birds. After Margaret's death in 1934 he presented Bonchurch with a pond and bird sanctuary in her memory. He later married Margaret's sister, Florence Robson (1938); there were no children from either marriage. Stacpoole died after an operation in a hospital at Shanklin, Isle of Wight, on 12 April 1951, and was buried in the new parish churchyard at Bonchurch.
His papers are held in the British Library, London, and the University of Texas at Austin. Photographs of Stacpoole may be found reproduced in his novel Garryowen (1909), the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Bookman (December 1925).