Raffles stories and adaptations

1904 Collier's illustration by J. C. Leyendecker

A. J. Raffles is a British fictional character – a cricketer and gentleman thief – created by E. W. Hornung. Between 1898 and 1909, Hornung wrote a series of 26 short stories, two plays, and a novel about Raffles and his fictional chronicler, Harry "Bunny" Manders.

The first story, "The Ides of March", appeared in the June 1898 edition of Cassell's Magazine.[1] The early adventures were collected in The Amateur Cracksman[2] and continued with The Black Mask (1901).[3] The last collection, A Thief in the Night (1904)[4] and the novel Mr. Justice Raffles (1909)[5] tell of adventures previously withheld. The novel was poorly received, and no further stories were published.[6]

Hornung dedicated the first collection of stories, The Amateur Cracksman, to his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, intending Raffles as a "form of flattery."[1] In contrast to Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson, Raffles and Bunny are "something dark, morally uncertain, yet convincingly, reassuringly English."[7]

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.

— Arthur Conan Doyle[1]

Raffles 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."[8] Additionally, the "recognition of the problems of the distribution of wealth is [a] recurrent subtext" throughout the stories.[1]

According to the Strand Magazine, these stories made Raffles "the second most popular fictional character of the time," behind Sherlock Holmes.[1] They have been adapted to film, television, stage, and radio, with the first appearing in 1903.

  1. ^ a b c d e Bleiler, Richard. "Raffles: The Gentleman Thief". Strand Magazine. Retrieved 22 February 2014.
  2. ^ Hornung, E. W. (29 April 2013). The Amateur Cracksman. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1484852606.
  3. ^ Hornung, E. W. (29 April 2013). The Black Mask. Ulverscroft Softcover. ISBN 978-1444808094.
  4. ^ Hornung, E. W. (22 July 2013). A Thief in the Night. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1491069363.
  5. ^ Hornung, E. W. (25 December 2012). Mr. Justice Raffles. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1481841856.
  6. ^ Rowland, Peter (1999). Raffles and His Creator. London: Nekta Publications. pp. 190 & 194–95. ISBN 0953358321.
  7. ^ Stuart, Evers (28 April 2009). "The Moral Riddles of AJ Raffles". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Quinn, Anthony (10 November 2012). "Book of a Lifetime: Raffles by EW Hornung". The Independent.