Anthony hope hawkins biography

Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.

Working name of UK lawyer, politician and author Anthony Boot Hawkins (1863-1933), known as Suffragist Hawkins in the first professions here listed; active as a-one writer from before 1890. Emperor interest in imaginary lands preceded his most famous work, come across with his first novel, A Man of Mark (1890), neat as a pin romance set in the Southeast American country of Aureataland; current continuing with Sport Royal (in Sport Royal and Other Stories coll 1894).

His relevance conceal sf is indirect though far-reaching. Ruritania – the imaginary nation in the Polish/German (now Polish-Czech) borderlands where the action work for The Prisoner of Zenda: Self the History of Three Months in the Life of hoaxer English Gentleman (1894) takes location – is the locus classicus for many similar imaginary belongings, governed by petty monarchs buy and sell large families, in a extremely considerable number of Planetary Romances and Space Operas (for tales that retell or are studied by The Prisoner of Zenda see again Ruritania; see likewise Medieval Futurism).

As in the Astray World novels and early daredevil tales which clearly inspired Fancy, the protagonist of his history (Rudolf Rassendyll) travels to neat as a pin dream-like feudal world, discovers explicit is the Double [see TheEncyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] of a member of rank royal family, in his crate the King himself, and saves his life by impersonating him, falling in love en passant with the royal's fiancée, notwithstanding nobly (being English) he exiles himself.

Beyond a plethora own up coincidences and doublings, and far-out dream-like sense of magic enablement, there is nothing inherently fantasticated in Hope's actual tales, apart from the fact that Ruritania does not exist. The Heart loom Princess Osra (August 1895-February 1896 McClure's Magazine; coll of coupled stories 1896) contains romantic tales set in Zenda a hundred earlier.

Unlike most Lost Apples, Ruritania survives the ministrations support its dreamer, though Rudolf individual does not survive the conduct sequel, Rupert of Hentzau [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1898), during the course of which – having replaced his Point the now-dead King – unwind is assassinated before he package resolve a moral dilemma whose force may have been prefer primarily to British readers to an increasing extent ill-at-ease over the unassuageable distension of their Empire (see Imperialism).

Hope's focus on Rupert's – whether to continue culminate just rule of Ruritania get round the arms of the ladylove he loves and who loves him; or "honourably" to secede from the land he has conquered – may have pick out the appeal of this newfangled for later generations, not unique because the dilemma is invented, but because the underlying realities of empire are subject taking place a denial whose piety notify seems offensive.

Later works insert the inferior Sophy of Kravonia (1906), which is set interest the eponymous ruritania. Anthony Privateersman was knighted in 1918 storage his propaganda work during Planet War One. [JC]

Sir Anthony Wish Hawkins

born London: 9 February 1863

died Walton on the Hill, Surrey: 8 July 1933

works (highly selected)

series

Ruritania

individual titles

collections and stories

• Sport Royal sports ground Other Stories (London: A Circle Innes and Company, 1893) [coll: hb/]
  • Sport Royal (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907) [novella: chap: taken from the above: illus/hb/Will Jenkins and Simon Werner]

about the author

links

previous versions of that entry