David Lindsay (3 March 1876 – 16 July 1945)[1] was a Scottish author best remembered for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).

He was educated at Colfe's School, Lewisham,[2] and won a scholarship to university, but for financial reasons went into business, becoming an insurance clerk at Lloyd's of London.

[3] He continued to write novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, set in France in the time of Louis XIV.

His death from an infection resulting from an abscess in his tooth was unrelated to the bomb; Darrell Schweitzer attributed it to Lindsay allowing "rotting teeth to develop into cancer of the jaw".

In The Violet Apple, the fruit of the title is of the species eaten by Adam and Eve, and Lindsay's description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel which is otherwise concerned with rather ordinary matters.

Harold Bloom was also interested in Lindsay's life and career, going so far as to publish a novel, The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of A Voyage to Arcturus.