[9] Groves married Harriet Augusta Raines (c. 1849 – 24 September 1908) at Christ Church, Marylebone, Westminster, on 11 March 1873.
One of the couple's sons assumed the name Groves-Raines, and the other eventually dropped his Groves surname to leave Raines in place.
The couple had eight children, seven of whom survived to adulthood: Grove was appointed bursar of Bradfield College in April 1883,[10] but left the post by the end of the summer term.
Groves began to publish juvenile fiction in 1883 with From Cadet to Captain of which the Reading Observer said: This is a wholesome and well-written tale put into autobiographical form and detailing in an interesting way the varied incidents of a young aspirant for military honours.
de Beauvoir died on 15 January 1891, leaving a personal estate (i.e. excluding any real property, which at the time was often entailed) valued at £53,000.
In the 1891 census, Groves describes himself as major of the Royal Guernsey Artillery Brigade, and an author and journalist.
Advertisements These were high quality, limited editions (530 for the book on the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers), with nine high-class chromo-lithographed illustrations.
[18] Apart from one final work, on the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, published in Guernsey in 1904, Groves had effectively stopped writing books by 1896.
By the time of the 1911 census, Groves was living in Whitefield, Christchurch, near Bournemouth with his son John Henry, who had left the army to become a poultry farmer.
[23] Grove also wrote or contributed to serial installments on military history, including Types of the British Army which ran as a column on regiments in The Graphic.
[24] The Graphic also produced coloured illustrations as supplements in a series called Types of the British Army and Navy.
The illustrations were usually of particular regiments such as the 10th and 19th Hussars by John Charlton,[25] but sometimes were of particular roles, such as A Captain of the Main-Top by W Christian Symonds.
Other sources included the COPAC database, publishers catalogues, newspaper reviews, and the used book trade.