Who was the ‘gentleman burglar’ created by E W Hornung?
E. W. Hornung E. W. Hornung Ernest William Hornung (7 June 1866 – 22 March 1921) was an English author and poet known for writing the A. J. Raffles series of stories about a gentleman thief in late 19th-century London. Hornung was educated at Uppingham School; as a result of poor health he left the school in December 1883 to travel to Sydney, where he stayed for two years. He drew on his Australian experiences as a background when he began writing, initially short stories and later novels. In 1898 he wrote "In the Chains of Crime", which introduced Raffles and his sidekick,
E. W. Hornung Stingaree, an Oxford-educated, Australian gentleman thief, in a novel that "casts doubt on conventional responses" to a positive criminal character, according to Hornung's biographer, Stephen Knight. In 1898 Hornung's mother died, aged 72 and he dedicated his next book, a series of short stories titled "Some Persons Unknown", to her memory. Later that year Hornung and his wife visited Italy for six months, staying in Posillipo; his account of the location appeared in an article of the May 1899 edition of "Cornhill Magazine". The Hornungs returned to London in early 1899, to a house in Pitt Street, West Kensington, where