He was innate Matthew Phipps Shiell within Montserrat, West Indies, and was of mixed race; his mother Priscilla Ann Blake was a mulatto, while his father Matthew Dowdy Shiell was from either the part Irish background, & was even as well of mixed race. Shiell was educated at Harrison College around Barbados.

He moved to Engl& a bit of period when 1880, and changed his last name to Shiel. When occasionally miscellaneous employment he gained in the Nineties the reputation for short stories influenced by Poe. He created the decadent detective Prince Zaleski, and was published by John Lane.

Around a short cycle he produced his greatest critical profits, the science fiction novel A Purple Cloud (1901), & major popular profits in The Yellow Danger (serial as much as 1899), the 1st of a total of works according to topical anti-Chinese racial feeling. Under fiscal pressures he quickly descended to writing hack act, creating the bibliographical sprawl of serial publication, rescript & collaborations.

His collaborators involved William Thomas Stead as an ideas man, Edgar Jepson, Oswell Blakeston, and in the future John Gawsworth and Louis Tracy. The content of his works was muddled, however involved a select few rudimentary versions of Nietzsche's thought, promotion of the ideas of Henry George, and casual racism. the bit of of his function in the Edwardian period of time seems to will have a provocative consequence on H. G. Wells.

He experienced the mussy personal life, astir which there exists little dependable tools. He died around Chichester.