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
Jonathan Couch "Natural History of British Fishes", and Yarrell was still more indebted to him in his "British Fishes", to all three editions of which (1836, 1841, and 1859) Couch was a copious contributor. His "Cornish Fauna", (part i. 1838, part ii. 1841), completed by his son Richard Quiller Couch in 1844, was another valuable piece of work. But his magnum opus was "A History of the Fishes of the British Islands," with coloured illustrations from his own drawings, (4 vols., London, 1860–65). This is a storehouse of information, carefully collected and sifted, as to the habits of fishes, and in many