[3] When Stewart left school, he went travelling, spending several months in Greece, where he took various jobs, including picking oranges and grapes, and whitewashing hotels.

[4] From 1974 to 1977, Stewart studied at the University of Lancaster, majoring in English, (which included a Creative Writing unit) with a minor in Religious Education.

[3] Stewart's first book to be published was The Thought Domain (1988) which was then followed by a number of other children's and young adult novels, chiefly in the thriller, horror and SF/Fantasy genres.

[citation needed] Stewart's favourite books when a child were The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Rupert Bear Annuals, and the works of Alan Garner, especially Elidor.

[citation needed] The inspiration for The Edge Chronicles came from a map Riddell drew of an imaginary world in 1994 and then challenged Stewart to write about it.

[4][5] The first book in the sequence, Beyond the Deepwoods, was commissioned by Transworld Publishers (now part of the Random House Group) on the basis of the map and the first four chapters.

[3] The series has now extended to fifteen full-length novels, five short stories, a book of maps and a now-defunct blog called Weird New Worlds.