Hornung continued to feature Australia in many of his works including Irralie’s Bushranger (1896), The Rogue’s March (1896), Dead Men Tell No Tales (1899), and Stingaree (1905). Green’s An Outline of Australian Literature (1930), notes Hornung’s contribution to Australian letters, and in both the 1949 Dictionary of Australian Biography and the 1983 Australian Dictionary of Biography, Hornung is accorded articles. The first literary history of Australia, H.M. It was Australia which provided the setting for his first works of fiction, works which have ensured him a permanent spot in that country’s literary history. In December 1883 he left school and went to Sydney, Australia, where he remained until February 1886. Hornung was educated at Uppingham School, and although he suffered greatly from asthma he became a cricket enthusiast (explaining Raffles’ excellence in the sport). His father, John Peter Hornung, was a Hungarian-born iron and coal merchant. Hornung (as he was to sign himself, though he preferred to be called Willie) was born in Middlesborough, Yorkshire, on 7 June 1866, the youngest of eight children. The first of Raffles’ adventures, “The Ides of March,” appeared in the June 1898 edition of Cassell’s Magazine, and though Sherlock Holmes would forever remain the most popular fictional character, Raffles would rapidly become the second most popular fictional character of the time.Į. His adventures are detailed by his friend (his Watson), Bunny Manders, a struggling journalist who first met the young Raffles while they were at school together.
Raffles, the perpetual houseguest, mingles with the upper class but is, in fact, a jewel thief-a master cracksman who makes his living by stealing from his wealthy acquaintances. Hornung achieved considerable success by inverting Arthur Conan Doyle’s formulas with his stories about the gentleman thief A.J. One author, however (who, interestingly was part of Conan Doyle’s family, having married Conan Doyle’s sister Constance in 1893), went about this in a different way. It was not long before other writers of the time realized that there was a ready market for parodies and pastiches of Conan Doyle’s work and that a living could be earned by using his formula. Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the most successful fictional character in the history of literature, very quickly made his creator, the unknown Scottish physician Arthur Conan Doyle, an internationally famous and best selling author. Throughout the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century detective and mystery fiction were dominated by one character as never before or since.
0 kommentar(er)
