Bernard Edward Joseph Capes was born on 30th August 1854 in London. He was one of 11 children.

His early work was as a journalist and this developed into writing many short stories for the periodicals of the time including Blackwood's, Butterfly, Cassell's, Cornhill Magazine, Hutton's Magazine, Illustrated London News, Lippincott's, Macmillan's Magazine, Literature, New Witness, Pall Mall Magazine, Pearson's Magazine, The Idler, The New Weekly, and The Queen.

It took him many years to decide that writing full-time could be a sustainable career path. His initial success came with ‘The Mill of Silence’. As well as being published it garnered second prize at a competition sponsored by the Chicago Record. He exceeded that by winning it the following year with ‘The Lake of Wine’.

Capes quickly became both prolific and popular. As well as his stories and articles for the periodicals he wrote around 40 volumes across novels, poetry, history as well as romance and mystery novels

Bernard Capes died on 2nd November 1918 in the flu epidemic.