Arthur Quiller-Couch the source of the popular writers' adage "murder your darlings". He is mentioned briefly in "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde as one of the few authors with a name beginning with the letter "Q". It is Quiller-Couch who originated the saying "kill your darlings": A collected edition of Q's fiction appeared as "Tales and Romances" (30 volumes, 1928–29). Arthur Quiller-Couch Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a Cornish writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication "The Oxford Book Of English
Arthur Quiller-Couch "Adventures in Criticism", and in 1898 he published a completion of Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel, "St. Ives". From his Oxford time he was known as a writer of excellent verse. With the exception of the parodies entitled "Green Bays" (1893), his poetical work is contained in "Poems and Ballads" (1896). In 1895 he published an anthology from the 16th- and 17th-century English lyricists, "The Golden Pomp", followed in 1900 by the "Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900". Later editions of this extended the period of concern to 1918 and it remained the leading general anthology of English verse until