: E.W. Hornung
: Raffles, Further Adventures
: Dead Dodo Crime Classics
: 9781508081241
: 1
: CHF 0.70
:
: Krimis, Thriller, Spionage
: English
: 220
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Cl ssic Crime Press presents youRaffle , Further Adventuresin a fantastic ebook edition.

 

E. W. Hornung wrote a series of twenty-six short stories and one novel about the adventures of Arthur J. Raffles, cricketer and gentleman thief, and his chronicler, Harry 'Bunny' Manders, in London, between 1898 and 1909. The first story, 'The Ides of March', appeared in the June 1898 edition of Cassell's Magazine. The early adventures were published in The Amateur Cracksman and continued with The Black Mask. The last collection, A Thief in the Night and the novel Mr. Justice Raffles tell of adventures previously withheld.

 

Hornun dedicated the first collection of stories, The Amateur Cracksman, to his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, intending Raffles as a 'form of flattery.' In contrast to Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson, Raffles and Bunny are 'something dark, morally uncertain, yet convincingly, reassuringly English.'

 

'I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson. He admits as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.'

 

-?Arth r Conan Doyle

 

Raffle is an antihero. Although a thief, he 'never steals from his hosts, he helps old friends in trouble, and in a subsequent volume he may or may not die on the veldt during the Boer War.' Additionally, the 'recognition of the problems of the distribution of wealth is a recurrent subtext' throughout the stories.

 

Accord ng to the Strand Magazine, these stories made Raffles 'the second most popular fictional character of the time,' behind Sherlock Holmes. They have been adapted to film, television, stage, and radio, with the first appearing in 1903.

A JUBILEE PRESENT


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THE ROOM OF GOLD, IN the British Museum, is probably well enough known to the inquiring alien and the travelled American. A true Londoner, however, I myself had never heard of it until Raffles casually proposed a raid.

“The older I grow, Bunny, the less I think of your so-called precious stones. When did they ever bring in half their market value in L.s.d. There was the first little crib we ever cracked together—you with your innocent eyes shut. A thousand pounds that stuff was worth; but how many hundreds did it actually fetch. The Ardagh emeralds weren’t much better; old Lady Melrose’s necklace was far worse; but that little lot the other night has about finished me. A cool hundred for goods priced well over four; and L35 to come off for bait, since we only got a tenner for the ring I bought and paid for like an ass. I’ll be shot if I ever touch a diamond again! Not if it was the Koh-I-noor; those few whacking stones are too well known, and to cut them up is to decrease their value by arithmetical retrogression. Besides, that brings you up against the Fence once more, and I’m done with the beggars for good and all. You talk about your editors and publishers, you literary swine. Barabbas was neither a robber nor a publisher, but a six-barred, barbed-wired, spike-topped Fence. What we really want is an Incorporated Society of Thieves, with some public-spirited old forger to run it for us on business lines.”

Raffles uttered these blasphemies under his breath, not, I am afraid, out of any respect for my one redeeming profession, but because we were taking a midnight airing on the roof, after a whole day of June in the little flat below. The stars shone overhead, the lights of London underneath, and between the lips of Raffles a cigarette of the old and only brand. I had sent in secret for a box of the best; the boon had arrived that night; and the foregoing speech was the first result. I could afford to ignore the insolent asides, however, where the apparent contention was so manifestly unsound.

“And how are you going to get rid of your gold?” said I, pertinently.

“Nothing easier, my dear rabbit.”

“Is your Room of Gold a roomful of sovereigns?”

Raffles laughed softly at my scorn.

“No, Bunny, it’s principally in the shape of archaic ornaments, whose value, I admit, is largely extrinsic. But gold is gold, from Phoenicia to Klondike, and if we cleared the room we should eventually do very well.”

“How?”

“I should melt it down into a nugget, and bring it home from the U.S.A. to-morrow.”

“And then?”

“Make them pay up in hard cash across the counter of the Bank of England. And you CAN make them.”

That I knew, and so said nothing for a time, remaining a hostile though a silent critic, while we paced the cool black