Anthony Hope is the main founder of the
Ruritanian romance genre; his best-known book is The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).
Taking a short break from Stella Benson and
Living Alone to refresh my memory and produce something to mark the occasion
has been a great relief. Unlike the Stella Benson material, The Prisoner of
Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau have no disturbing associations; they
don’t stir up painful and depressing memories or give rise to horrible ideas.
On the other hand, the Zenda stories don’t
contain the sort of material that generates investigations and commentary; they
have no witches or magic in them, although they are fantasy of a kind.
The basic biographical information available,
most of which can be found in Anthony Hope’s Wiki entry, is not very relevant
either.
Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was an English
gentleman. He and his swashbuckling adventure stories have some similarities with John Buchan and his works. Both men had brief legal careers before they started
writing for example.
