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
Elleston Trevor in Bromley, Kent, he lived in Spain and France before moving in 1973 to the United States, where he lived in Phoenix, Arizona. He was married twice: in 1947 to Jonquil Burgess (died 1986) by whom he had one son, Jean Pierre Trevor, and in 1987 to Chaille Anne Groom. He was proficient in karate. The Quiller series focuses on a solitary, highly capable spy (named after Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) who works (generally alone) for a government bureau that "doesn't exist" and narrates his own adventures. Quiller (not his real name) occupies a literary middle ground between James Bond and