Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills was the son of the Rev. Barton Mills and Lady Catherine Hobart-Hampden, sister of the seventh Earl of Buckinghamshire. He was one of a family of authors. His grandfather, Arthur Mills, was a Tory Member of Parliament and an expert on colonial economies and governance. The senior Mills' India in 1858 describes the political and economic conditions in India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Arthur F. H. Mills was the brother of children's book author George Mills (Meredith and Co., King Willow) and husband of author, explorer, and adventurer Lady Dorothy Mills (The Laughter of Fools, The Road to Timbuktu), to whom he was married from 1916 until their divorce in 1933.

Education and career

Captain Mills (Wellington College, Berkshire, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) was gazetted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in 1908 and served in China, India and Palestine. He was wounded in World War I at La Bassée and wrote a pair of books, his first, about that experience: With My Regiment: From the Aisne to La Bassée (J. B. Lippincott & Co.: Philadelphia, 1916) and Hospital Days (T. Fisher Unwin: London, 1916) under the pseudonym Platoon Commander. At his wedding to Lady Dorothy Walpole, daughter of the fifth Earl of Orford, in 1916, her wedding ring was made from a bullet that had been surgically removed from his ankle. Despite favourable reviews, frequent impressions, and global translations of many of his earlier books (The Broadway Madonna, The Gold Cat), Mills eventually became known as a genre author of cheap crime and adventure novels. His work has been largely forgotten. Mills died in Hampshire, UK, on 18 February 1955.