Monday, March 02, 2009

The debut of the Amateur Cracksman.

George Simmers on the Great War blog looks at the 1898 debut of A. J. Raffles, cricket player, gentleman burglar, and—according to Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda—a "low scoundrel" (qtd. by Richard Lancelyn Green in Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, p. xlii). Raffles was created by E. W. Hornung (1866–1921), the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle. I was always very fond of Bunny Manders, Raffles's put-upon sidekick, and liked not only the Hornung stories but also the versions by Barry Perowne (aka Philip Atkey).

A list of Raffles-Holmes meetings outside of the Hornung-Conan Doyle oeuvre can be found here, including "The Problem of the Sore Bridge—among Others" by the recently departed Philip Jose Farmer.

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