The Terror - Edgar Wallace

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Résumé :
This early work by Edgar Wallace was originally published in 1932 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Terror' is a detective novel about a lonely house whose corridors echo with the sound of the strange notes of a church organ. Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in London, England in 1875. He received his early education at St. Peter's School and the Board School, but after a frenetic teens involving a rash engagement and frequently changing employment circumstances, Wallace went into the military. He served in the Royal West Kent Regiment in England and then as part of the Medical Staff Corps stationed in South Africa. Whilst in the Balkans covering the Russo-Japanese War, Wallace found the inspiration for The Four Just Men, published in 1905. Over the rest of his life, Wallace produced some 173 books and wrote 17 plays. These were largely adventure narratives with elements of crime or mystery, and usually combined a bombastic sensationalism with hammy violence.

Biographie:
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875 - 1932) was an English writer. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at age 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War, for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialized short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognized author. Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. He is remembered for the creation of King Kong, as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories and for The Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions, and The Economist describes him as one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century.