E.W. Hornung
writer
- Birth name:
- Ernest William Hornung
- Born:
- 1866-06-07, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England, UK
- Died:
- 1921-03-22, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France
- Professions:
- writer
Biography
On 7 June 1866, Middlesbrough’s blast-furnace sky welcomed Ernest William Hornung into the world. He would trade the clang of North Yorkshire iron for the scratch of pen on paper, inventing A. J. Raffles—the gentleman thief who bowed to society while emptying its pockets. Page by page, Hornung turned cricket-flannel poise into larcenous art, first in print, then through the flicker of silent screens in 1925, 1930, and again in 1939. Off the page, he claimed as his ally and bride Constance Conan Doyle, daughter of the man who created Sherlock Holmes—an alliance that stitched detection to burglary in one literary family tree. The final chapter closed on 22 March 1921, when the Atlantic breeze of Saint-Jean-de-Luz carried him beyond the Pyrenees, leaving Raffles to roam forever one heartbeat ahead of the law.
