Rafael Sabatini was an Italian-born British writer of romance and adventure novels. He is best known for his worldwide bestsellers: The Sea Hawk (1915), Scaramouche (1921), Captain Blood (a.k.a. Captain Blood: His Odyssey) (1922), and Bellarion the Fortunate (1926). Several of his novels have been made into films, both silent and sound.

In his career, Sabatini produced 34 novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books, numerous uncollected short stories, and several plays. At a young age, he was exposed to many languages and, by the time he was seventeen, was the master of five languages. He quickly added English to his linguistic collection. After a brief stint in the business world, he went to work as a writer, with his first novel coming out in 1902. Sabatini was a prolific writer, producing a new book approximately every year. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, stating, "all the best stories are written in English."