Henry Marriage Wallis was born in Ipswich in 1854 and was educated at Bootham School, York. He moved to Reading as a young man where he worked as a corn and seed merchant until his retirement in 1909. He spent many holidays egg collecting and observing birds with friends. In the 1870s and 1880s he visited Scotland and Ireland, Norway, and the Central Pyrenees in the 1890s and later Morocco, Algeria, the Alps, and the Balkans. His ornithological observations were published in a number of notes and short papers. He also wrote several novels under the nom-de-plume of Ashton Hilliers. Wallis was Honorary Curator of Zoology at Reading Museum for 50 years in the latter half of his life, where he played a major part in developing the natural history collections, with a particular interest in local bird species. He was a member of the Ornithologists' Union and regularly attended meetings for many years.