Sax Rohmer Biography and List of Works

Prolific English mystery writer, best known as the creator of the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu and his opponents Denis Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, (named after the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie), and the beautiful Kâramanéh, the target of Petrie's daydreams, whose "eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal." In spite of Rohmer's popularity, his family lived in poverty for many years because of the bad deals he made with the publishers.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government - which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man..."
(from The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, 1913)

Sax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Ward in Birmingham of Irish parents. His father, William Ward, was employed as an office clerk and eventually held the position of office manager. His mother, Margaret Mary (Furey) Ward, was neurasthenic and increasingly dependent on alcohol. Young Sax Rohmer received no formal schooling until he was nine or ten years old, but his father taught his son to read. Rohmer adopted the name Sarsfield at the age of 18, impressed by his mother's alcoholic claims of being descended from a famous 17th-century Irish general Patrick Sarsfield. He later explained that the pen name came from 'sax' which was Saxon for 'blade' and 'rohmer' which meant 'roamer'.

After finishing his schooling, Rohmer worked at numerous odd jobs. He was briefly a clerk in a bank in Threadneedle Street, a clerk in a gas company, an errand boy at a small local newspaper, and a reporter on the weekly Commercial Intelligence. At the age of 20 Rohmer began his writing career. His story, THE MYSTERIOUS MUMMY, appeared in Pearson's Weekly in 1903.

In 1909 he married Rose Elizabeth Knox, whose father had been a well-known comedian. When Rose Knox met Rohmer, she was performing in a juggling act with her brother Bill. For almost two years they kept the marriage a secret from Rose's family - she lived with her sister and Rohmer with his father. Rose believed she was psychic and Rohmer himself seemed to attract metaphysical phenomena - according to one story he and his wife consulted a ouija board asking it the best method whereby Rhomer might make a successful living. The answer came back 'C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N'.

Rohmer wrote comedy sketches for entertainers and continued to produce stories and serials, which would see book form years later. Rohmer's first book, PAUSE! Appeared in 1910, and his first Fu Manchu novel, THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU-MANCHU, three years after that. It was an immediate success. In the character of the seemingly immortal Dr. Fu Manchu, Rohmer expressed contemporary racist fears concerning the "Yellow Peril" - according to racist prejudices the Chinese were mandarin warlords and opium den keepers situated in Limehouse. The sociologist Virginia Berridge however, has estimated that the ethnic Chinese population in London's East End in the period of 1900 through to the Second World War was only in the hundreds. The majority of the population worked in such professions as cooking and laundering clothes. Irrational racist hatred also oozes from the novels of Edgar Wallace and John Buchan, who frequently employed the wicked Jew stereotype in his work.

'"Greeting! I am recalled home by One who may not be denied. In much that I came to do I have failed. Much that I have done I would undo; some little I have undone. Out of fire I came--the smouldering fire of a thing one day to be a consuming flame; in fire I go. Seek not my ashes. I am the lord of the fires! Farewell.
"FU-MANCHU."'
(from 'The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu')

Originally Fu Manchu made his entrance in the story THE ZAYAT KISS in the October 1912 issue of the British magazine The Story-Teller. During the following years the stories were published in collections, but at the end of the third book THE SI-FAN MYSTERIES (1917), Fu Manchu is killed. In 1915 Rohmer invented a detective character Gaston Max, who first appeared in THE YELLOW CLAW. Other interesting characters are the occult detective Morris Klaw and Sumuru, a female master plotter from the Fu Manchu stable.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Rohmer was one of the most widely read and most highly paid magazine writers in the English language. He also produced works for the stage, and created tunes to several of his songs by humming them and having them transcribed by a collaborator. Rohmer's interest in mysticism and the occult made him join the occult organization the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose members included such individuals as Aleister Crowley and William Butler Yeats. His supernatural stories include BROOD OF THE WITCH QUEEN (1918) in which an Egyptian mummy is revived in order to practice ancient sorcery in the modern world, and GREY FACE (1924), in which a supposed reincarnation of Cagliostro causes much havoc.

Success brought Rohmer financial security - for a short time. He travelled with his wife in the Near East, Jamaica, and in Egypt, and built a country house called Little Gatton in the Surrey countryside. But the money disappeared quickly - Rohmer's business instincts were not good and he spent money at Monte Carlo.

The Fu Manchu series started again after years of silence in DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU (1931). After World War II the Rohmers moved to New York City. In order to qualify for permanent-resident status, they had to leave the country temporarily. From New York they moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, before finally settling in White Plains, New York. Among Rohmer's later works are HANGOVER HOUSE (1949), based on a un- produced play from the late 1930s, and the Sumuru series, five paperback novels published between 1950 and 1956. Sax Rohmer died from a combination of pneumonia and a stroke on June 1, 1959.

"Here, perhaps, lies one of the secrets of Fu Manchu's power to fascinate. The Sinophobic message of Rohmer's books is underpinned by three theories: the notion of conspiracy which is based upon a corporate, international secret society acting out of Limehouse, the notion of a parallel supernatural plane of existence and the notion of eternal recurrence."
(Clive Bloom in Cult Fiction, 1996)

The golden age of Fu Manchu stories - and also the peak of Sax Rohmer's career - was the 1930s, although the Chinese super-criminal was revived again in 1957. A sequel TEN YEARS BEYOND BAKER STREET (1984) was written by Cay Van Ash, in which the Evil Doctor fights Sherlock Holmes. There are also radio and comic's adaptations, the TV series The Adventures of Fu Manchu (1955-56) and several movies, starring among others Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, and Peter Sellers. - Sinister Oriental Fu Manchu stereotypes were feared since the turn of the Twentieth century, appearing in wide numbers in popular fiction. Among the best know doppelgangers is Dr. No from Ian Fleming's James Bond novel DR. NO (1958).

For further reading: Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, ed. by David Pringle (1998); Cult Fiction by Clive Bloom (1996); The Guide to Supernatural Fiction by Everett F. Bleiler (1983); The Yellow Peril: Chinese in American Fiction, 1850-1940 by William F. Wu (1982); Master of Villainy: A Biography of Sax Rohmer by Cay Van Ash and Elisabeth Sax Rohmer (1972); The Mystery Writer's Art by Robert E. Briney (1970)

PAUSE!, (1910)