PG Wodehouse was prolific and successful but there was another genre in the first half of the last century – between the wars – and those authors made more money. Edgar Wallace and Somerset Maugham rivalled our subject today in popularity and earnings.
Of whom do we treat? He wrote more than 150 novels and collections of short stories and had “one of the most fertile imaginations ever to apply itself to the thriller” (Barrie Hayne, 1985).
Born in London in 1866 … had to leave grammar school in Leicester early to work in his father’s leather business. For twenty years he carried on the merchant trade by day and wrote by night. In 1905, his book sales made him so wealthy he could sell the family firm and move to live the life of a country squire in Norfolk. He soon migrated to the French Riviera, where he mixed with the global super-rich from whom he drew inspiration for characterisation and plots. (Professor Tim Crook, Goldsmiths, University of London and Birmingham City University)
I guess you have never heard of E Phillips Oppenheimer. Unlike PG Wodehouse but like Dornford Yates, Sapper and Saki he is largely forgotten. There was a huge appetite for thrillers serialised for a newly literate public, often serialised and EPO was the man to profitably fill the void. Here he is on the the cover of Time in 1937.
Isn’t it interesting that Time never put Plum on their cover? Pretty obvious actually: E (call me Edward) Phillips Oppenheim wrote for a wide readership. He writes in an accessible way, he writes simple, enthralling thrillers – in short he writes rubbish and that’s what the paying public pant for. I am much enjoying The Great Impersonation published in 1935 by Hodder & Stoughton. It’s crap but, as Bertie says, it’s good crap. Bertie says there’s no such thing as bad crap. I agree with Bertie in this instance, he’s a connoisseur.
Now a message from your cocktail sung by Clodagh Rogers.