Edgar Wallace: The Man Who Created King Kong

Front Cover
The History Press, Oct 27, 2014 - Biography & Autobiography - 378 pages

‘It is impossible not to be thrilled by Edgar Wallace.’ So said the blurbs of Wallace’s own books.

Indeed, he was a prolific author of over 170 books, translated into more than thirty languages. More films were made from his books than any other twentieth-century writer, and in the 1920s a quarter of all books read in England were written by him. His success is written in black and white, but his life got off to an inauspicious start.

Edgar Wallace, the illegitimate son of a travelling actress, rose from poverty in Victorian England to become the most popular author in the world and a global celebrity of his age.

Famous for his thrillers, with their fantastic plots, in many ways Wallace did not write his most exciting story: he lived it, and here Neil Clark eloquently tells his tale to allow you to live it too.

 

Selected pages

Contents

For King and Country
18
The Fiction Factory
Thrilling a Nation
Enter the Ringer
People
King of the West
Film Director

Off to South Africa
War Reporter
A Husband a Father and a Newspaper Editor
The Special Correspondent
The Four Just
In Deepest Africa
Captain Tatham and Commissioner Sanders
Back on Fleet Street
The Curious Case of the Confession of Dr Crippen
More Bright Ideas
Adventures in Germany and America
Hats Off to Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
Edgar Goes to Hollywood
The Final Chapter
Edgar Wallace Lives
Notes
Select Bibliography and Further Reading Copyright
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

NEIL CLARK is a journalist, broadcaster and award-winning blogger. He has contributed numerous articles to leading newspapers, such as the Guardian, Daily Mail and The Spectator. He is a regular pundit on sport and current affairs on television and radio, and in 1993-94 he was Chair of the Edgar Wallace Society.

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