Edgar Wallace

The Flying Squad (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. E. Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the 'King of Thrillers' and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was in, estimating that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding 'excellence in writing'. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Copyright Group
• Seitenzahl: 181
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. Juni 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781783944880
• Artikelnr.: 41839079

Autorenporträt

British author Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace lived from 1 April 1875 to 10 February 1932. Wallace, a 12-year-old illegitimate kid from London who was born into poverty, quit school. He joined the military at the age of 21. He covered the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. At the age of 46, he passed very abruptly from untreated diabetes while the first draft of King Kong (1933) was being written. It's been said that Wallace wrote one-fourth of all literature in England. His works have been adapted into more than 160 movies. He is famous for writing "the colonial imagination," the J. G. Reeder detective novels, and The Green Archer serial in addition to his work on King Kong. The Economist referred to him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century" in 1997 despite the fact that the vast majority of his books are no longer in print in the UK but are still popular in Germany. He sold more than 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions. The Edgar Wallace Story, a 50-minute German television documentary, was produced in 1963 and starred his son Bryan Edgar Wallace.