Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

What they (supposedly) wanted us to read in 1895.

Harvard, as part of its exhibition "Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History," is offering online the 1895 List of Books for Girls and Women and Their Clubs, issued for the American Library Association. The fiction list, "chosen and annotated by a reviewer for The Nation," tends to snarkiness, especially about popular books by women. Some of the listings:

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Aurora Floyd, Eleanor's Victory, Lady Audley's Secret. "The worst that may be said of her books is that the impression of life conveyed by them is generally false."

• Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. "His best books are narratives of military adventure, though perhaps the most popular describe the commission and detection of crime."

• Marie Corelli, Vendetta, The Soul of Lilith. "She enjoys great popularity."

• Anna Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case, The Mill Mystery, A Matter of Millions, A Strange Disappearance. "She scorns probability both in plot and character, and, to persons of reason, her books are tiresome and nonsensical. From her popularity it would appear that reason is scarce..."

• H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines, She, Heart of the World. "He is ingenious."

• Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda. "...The impossibility of all is a cold afterthought."

• Edgar Allan Poe, Tales. "Morbidly imaginative."

• E.D.E.N. Southworth, A Leap in the Dark, The Lost Heiress. "Her distortion of truth and fact is wonderful, and her sentimentality appalling."

• Lew Wallace, Ben Hur, The Fair God, The Prince of India. "His books are extremely long, the construction is intricate, and the grammar imperfect."

• Ellen Wood, East Lynne, Danesbury House. "The work is much better than much of its class."

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos. About the image: Cartoon of Mary Elizabeth Braddon from Punch, 1881, NYPL.)

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.

Happy birthday, Anthony Hope.

Lawyer and Parliamentary candidate Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope and the author of The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), was born today in 1863. Praised by Arthur Quiller-Couch (aka Q) for his "singular and agreeable talents," Hope, after producing his most famous work about political intrigue in the fictional kingdom of Ruritania, wrote the sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898), which followed the further adventures of the villain of Zenda, and other romantic tales. Hope Hawkins died in 1933.

Above: Theatrical poster of Rupert of Henzau, by Anthony Hope, ca. 1898. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction no. LC-USZ62-28563

"Au revoir, play-actor!"

Lawyer and Parliamentary candidate Sir Anthony Hope-Hawkins, better known as British novelist Anthony Hope, was born on February 9, 1863. He died in 1933.

Hope's best-known work is probably that swashbuckling tale of political intrigue, The Prisoner of Zenda, with its far-fetched yet engaging scenario of identical cousins (cue "Patty Duke Show" music here), one a commoner and the other a king, pitted against the nefarious Prince Michael and Rupert of Henzau (boo, hiss). It was a smash bestseller when published in 1894, which generated a congratulatory telegram to the author from Robert Louis Stevenson.

There were three silent-film Zendas before the beloved 1937 film with Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Madeleine Carroll. It was filmed again, less successfully, in 1952 with Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, and James Mason, and its premise was also seen in the 1993 movie Dave with Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and Frank Langella.

I plan to play part 1 of a radio production of "The Prisoner of Zenda" on the February 12th broadcast of my radio show "It's a Mystery." It stars Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and C. Aubrey Smith. "It's a Mystery" airs at 11 AM ET on Mondays and is Webcast here.