Gilbert Hunter Doble

Gilbert Hunter Doble (26 November 1880 – 15 April 1945) was an Anglican priest and Cornish historian and hagiographer.

During his parochial ministry, he was a great friend of children, especially those deprived of proper care by familial poverty or the workhouse.

In between ministering to the needs of his parishioners, Canon Doble pursued a lifelong study of sub-Roman Celtic Britain and Brittany, in which he gained a European-wide reputation.

He was especially interested in the medieval vitae or 'lives', and additional legends, related to the early Christian holy men and women (or 'saints')[4] of Cornwall, Wales and of Brittany.

We may regard them as religious romances or novels, and as is generally agreed, they were written to enhance the cause of the church or parochia, whose freedom and independence was not infrequently threatened at this time.

He was responsible for the first performance of the Cornish miracle play Beunans Meriasek since the Reformation in June 1924 (in English translation).

Doble's work on the Lives of the Welsh Saints has been collected into one volume and published by the University of Wales Press.