He was a prolific historical novelist, many of his books being set in Czarist Russia, and his "schoolboy" and adventure serials appeared in many boys' magazines of the era.
Several of these were published as full-length novels, such as Gubbins Minor and Some Other Fellows (1897), The Boys of Brierley Grange (1906) and The Competitors: A Tale of Upton House School (1906).
[3] Eight weeks after his birth, his parents moved the family back to Great Britain and settled in Paignton, Devon where Whishaw would spend much of his childhood.
[4] Whishaw was soon inspired to try his hand at writing and had his semi-autobiography, Out of Doors in Tsarland: A Record of the Seeings and Doings of a Wanderer in Russia, published in 1893.
[4] His schoolboy stories were a mix of gentle humour and more serious themes of public school life such as theft, house matches, and other common behaviour of the time.
Whishaw also wrote several books on Russian history, most notably the well-received Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812 in 1905.