Edgar Wallace Biography and List of Works

British novelist, playwright, and journalist who produced popular detective and suspense stories and was in his time "the king" of the modern thriller. Wallace's literary output - 175 books, 24 plays, and countless articles and review sketches - have undermined his reputation as a fresh and original writer. Moreover, the author was a wholehearted supporter of Victorian and early Edwardian values and mores, which are now considered in some respects politically incorrect.

"This little autobiography is in itself a tribute to the system under which we live. There cannot be much wrong with the society which made possible the rise of J.H. Thomas or Edgar Wallace, that gave 'Jamie' Brown the status of a king in Scotland and put Robertson at the War Office as Chief of the Imperial General Staff."
(from Wallace's introduction to his autobiography, People; Edgar Wallace: The Biography of a Phenomenon, 1926)

Edgar Wallace was born in Greenwich, and was brought up as an adopted child in the family of Dick Freeman, a London fish porter. His parents were actors, Polly Richards and Richard Horatio Edgar Marriott, who used the false name of Walter Wallace on the birth records. Young Wallace left school at the age of 12, and took menial jobs before enlisting in the Army at the age of 18, serving in the Royal West Kent Regiment from 1893 to 1896.

"He was strictly brought up by parents who compelled him to read books on Sunday that were entirely devoted to orphans and good organ-grinders and little girls who quoted extensively from precious books, and died surrounded by weeping Negroes. In such literature the villains of the piece were young scoundrels who surreptitiously threw away their crusts and only ate crumb part of bread; desperadoes who kicked dogs, and threw large flies into spiders' webs, and watched the spider at his fell work with glee."
(from Double Dan, 1924)

In 1896 Wallace was sent to South Africa, where he served in the Medical Staff Corps. During this period he met the Reverend William Shaw Caldecott and his wife Marion, who as a writer was willing to help Wallace fulfil his own writing aspirations. Wallace began to contribute to various journals, and wrote war poems, later collected in THE MISSION THAT FAILED (1898) and other volumes.

After his discharge in 1899, Wallace became a correspondent for Reuters and the London Daily Mail. His reports about Horatio Herbert Kitchener infuriated the influential British field marshal and Wallace was banned as a war correspondent until World War I. In 1902 Wallace served in as the editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg before returning to London. In 1901 he married Ivy Caldecott; they were divorced in 1918.

Wallace's first novel, THE FOUR JUST MEN, appeared in 1905, published by his own Tallis Press. It tells the story of a group who take the law into their own hands. Although the book was a huge success, Wallace lost money because of an unlucky publicity gimmick. It was not until the publication of SANDERS OF THE RIVER (1911), about an African representative of the British Britain Foreign Office, that his fame as a writer was established. Wallace then wrote several additional stories using his African experiences as a background. His attitudes uncritically reflect the popular opinions of the time - later simply named "imperialist ideology". In the stories about Bosambo, a devious tribal king, Mr. Commissioner Sanders often loses the battle of wits, although Bosambo in one scene admits that he has always wanted to be a chief under British rule. However, he manages to steal Sanders's binoculars. Sanders method of keeping the peace is simple: he uses the whip and he has a reputation for hanging rebellious chiefs.

Throughout the 1900s and 1910s Wallace worked in several journals, among them the Daily Mail (1903-1907), Standard (1910), The Week-End Racing Supplment (1910-12), Evening News (1910-1912), The Story Journal (1913), Town Topics (1913-16). He was later a racing columnist for The Star (1927-32) and the Daily Mail (1930-32). During World War I Wallace was a special interrogator for the War Office. In 1921 he married his secretary and second wife, Violet King, who was twenty-three years his junior, and with whom he had one daughter.

THE GREEN ARCHER (1923) is one of Wallace's most famous novels. It is the story of a man who is found murdered after a quarrel with the owner of a haunted castle. It was filmed at least three times. Supernatural themes do not appear very often in Wallace's works. Spiritualism and ghosts are dealt in such short stories such as 'Death Watch,' filmed in 1933 with Warner Oland, 'The Ghost of John Holling,' filmed in 1934, and 'The Ghost of Down Hill,' later adapted in the sixties for the Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre series.

""I'm perfectly certain it wasn't a ghost," she said.
"Oh, you are, are you?" his eyes twinkled, "and how do you reach that conclusion?"
"Ghosts don't wear boots," she said decidedly.
"They may have shoes," said the dry old man.""
(from 'The Ghost of Down Hill')

Wallace wrote at a prodigious pace, one of his most popular plays, ON THE SPOT (1931), was finished in four days. His autobiography, PEOPLE; EDGAR WALLACE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A PHENOMENON appeared in 1926. At the peak of Wallace's career in the 1920s, one of his numerous publishers claimed that he wrote a quarter of all the books read in England. Most of Wallace's novels were spoken into a Dictaphone, typed up by his wife or a secretary, and then corrected. His skill in creating lively dialogue was noted by filmmakers who readily used his texts for films. Wallace also wrote screenplays - including some dialogue for The Hound of Baskervilles (1931), directed by V. Gareth Gundrey.

"There is a tradition in criminal circles that even the humblest of detective officers is a man of wealth and substance, and that his secret hoard was secured by thieving, bribery and blackmail. It is the gossip of the fields, the quarries, the tailor's shop, the laundry and the bake house of fifty county prisons and three convict establishments, that all highly placed detectives have by nefarious means laid up for themselves sufficient earthly treasures to make a work a hobby and their official pittance the most inconsiderable portion of their incomes."
(from 'The Treasure Hunt', in The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder, 1925)

Wallace accumulated large wealth as a result of his writing, but he lost fortunes because of his extravagant lifestyle and obsessive gambling. Wallace's literary estate was not profitable until 1934. Hundreds of films have been made from his novels and short stories, also plays and television series in England (1959) and Germany (1959), where a series of Wallace adaptations became the nation's most popular screen entertainment. In 1960 Jack Greenwood produced in England a series of short screen adaptations for British and American television use under the title Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre.

Towards the end of his life, Wallace estimated that his work as a playwright was more important than his work as a writer of stories. It was largely the success of the plays - THE CALENDAR (1929), On the Spot, and THE CASE OF THE FRIGHTENED LADY (1931) - which led to his invitation to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter. Just before departing for the United States, he stood as an unsuccessful Liberal candidate in Blackpool. Wallace died on February 10, 1932, en route to Hollywood to work on the screenplay for King Kong. Although Wallace received screen credit, he did no actual work on the film. Ivy Wallace died fourteen months after her husband's death.

Film adaptations 1925-1962: The Green Archer, 1925, dir. by Spencer Bennet; The Mark of the Frog, 1928, dir. by Arch Heath; The Terrible People, 1928, dir. by Spencer Bennet; The Terror, 1928, dir. by Roy Del Ruth; The Ringer, dir. by Arthur Maude; Red Aces, 1929, dir. by Edgar Wallace; The Flying Squad, 1929, dir. by Arthur Maude; The Clue of the New Pin, 1929, dir. by Arthur Maude; The Squeaker, 1930, dir. by Edgar Wallace; The Menace, 1932, dir. by Roy William Neill; The Frightened Lady, 1932, dir. by T.Hayes Hunter; King Kong, 1933, dir. by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper; Before Dawn, 1933, dir. by Irving Pichel; Mystery Liner, dir. by William Neill; The Return of the Terror, 1934, dir. by Howard Bretherton; Sanders of the River, 1935, dir. by Zoltan Korda; The Crimson Circle, 1936, dir. by Reginald Denham; The Girl From Scotland Yard, 1937, dir. by Robert Vignola; The Squeaker / Murder on Diamond Row, 1937, dir. by William K. Howard; Mr. Reeder in Room 13, 1938, dir. by Norman Lee; The Mind of Mr. Reeder, 1939, dir. by Jack Raymond; The Missing People, 1939, dir. by Jack Raymond; The Four Just Men / The Secret Four, 1939, dir. by Walter Forde; Dark Eyes of London / The Human Monster, 1939, dir. by Walter Summers; The Green Archer, 1940, dir. by James W. Horne; The Door with Seven Locks / Chamber of Horrors, 1940, dir. by Norman Lee; The Case of the Frightened Lady / The Frightened Lady, 1940, dir. by George King; The Ringer, 1952, dir. by Guy Hamilton; The Clue of the Twisted Candle, 1960, dir. by Allan Davis; The Malpas Mystery, 1960, dir. by Geoffrey Keen; The Man Who Was Nobody, 1961, dir. by Montgomery Tully; Clue of the New Pin, 1961, dir. by Alla Davis; The Fourth Square, 1961, dir. by Allan Davis; Man at the Carlton Tower, 1961, dir. by Robert Tronson; Clue of the Silver Key, 1961, dir. by Gerald Glaister; The Share Out, dir. by Gerald Glaister; Number six, 1962, dir. by Robert Tronson.

Series characters: Among Wallace's characters are J.G. Reeder, T.B. Smith, Superintendent Minter, Sanders of the Rivers, The Sooper, and Sergeant/Inspector Elk. - J.G. Reeder is a little, middle-aged man, with a 'criminal mind'. "He wore half-way down his nose a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez, through which nobody had ever seen him look - they were invariably removed when he was reading. A high and flat-crowned bowler hat matched and yet did not match a frock coat tightly buttoned his sparse chest. His boots were square-toed, his cravat - of the broad chest-protector pattern - was ready-made and buckled into place behind a Gladstonian collar." Reeder sees evil plots everywhere, and most of them seem to be real. Reader has worked at various times for Scotland Yard, the Banker's Trust, and the public prosecutor's office. Four British films of the 1920s were based on the novels and short stories about Reeder. The first, Red Aces, was written and directed by Edgar Wallace, the following were Mr. Reeder in Room 13 (1938, dir. by Norman Lee), The Mind of Mr. Reeder (1938, dir. by Jack Raymond), and The Missing People (1939, dir. by Jack Raymond). TV series The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder was produced in 1971. - J.G. Reeder books: Room 13 (1924); The Mind of J.G. Reeder (1925); Terror Keep (1927); Red Aces (1929); The Guv'nor and Other Stories (1932) - Screenplays: Nurse and Martyr (1915); The Ringer (1928); Valley of the Ghosts (1928); The Forger (1928); Red Aces (1929); The Squeaker (1930); Should a Doctor Tell? (1930); The Hound of the Baskervilles (1931, with V. Gareth Gundrey); The Old Man (1931); King Kong (1933, with others, based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Wallace, although his contribution might have been minimal).

For further information: Edgar Wallace, the Biography of a Phenomenon by Margaret Lane (1964); Encyclopaedia of Mystery and Detection, ed. by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976); Edgar Wallace by Jack Adrian (1984); Edgar Wallace: A Filmography by Richard Williams (1990); The Edgar Wallace Index by Richard Williams (1996); Tracking King Kong by Erb Cyntihia, Cyntihia Marie Erb (1998) - Edgar Wallace Society was founded in 1969. It promotes interest in the life and work of the author through the Crimson Circle magazine.

THE MISSION THAT FAILED!, (1898)