Max Carrados (A Collection of Classic Detective Stories) - Softcover

Bramah, Ernest

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1473304830 ISBN 13: 9781473304833

Publisher: Moran Press, 2015

Synopsis

This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1914 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Max Carrados' is a collection of Bramah's classic detective tales. Ernest Bramah Smith was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

About this title

About the Author:

Ernest Bramah (20 March 1868 – 27 June 1942), born Ernest Brammah Smith, was an English author. He published 21 books and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K Jerome, and W.W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H.G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah's book What Might Have Been influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados. Bramah was a recluse who did not give the public details of his personal life. He died at 74 a successful author, having a knowledge of chemistry, physics, law, philosophy, the classics, literature, the occult and ordnance, and being an expert in a branch of numismatics. Bramah dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School at 16, having been close to the bottom of each class in each subject. He went into farming, first as a farm pupil and then in his own right. He was supported by his father who had risen in a short time from a factory hand to a wealthy man. The farming enterprise cost his father £100,000 in today's money. It was while farming that he began to contribute local vignettes to the Birmingham News. Later he wrote a tongue-in-cheek book about his adventure in farming which found few buyers and was remaindered and pulped. After the farming debacle, his father agreed to support him while he made his way in Grub Street. He obtained a position as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome and rose to edit one of Jerome's magazines. After leaving Jerome he edited other journals for a publishing firm that went into bankruptcy. Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods. With Kai Lung, Bramah invented a form of Mandarin English illustrated by the following passages: Kai Lung rose guardedly to his feet, with many gestures of polite assurance and having bowed several times to indicate his pacific nature, he stood in an attitude of deferential admiration. At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension to conceal the direction of her flight.

About the Author:

Ernest Bramah, of whom in his lifetime Who's Who had so little to say, was born in Manche-ster. At seventeen he chose farming as a pro-fession, but after three years of losing money gave it up to go into journalism. He started as correspondent on a typical provincial paper, then went to London as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, and worked himself into the editorial side of Jerome's magazine, To-day, where the got the opportunity of meeting the most impor-tant literary figures of the day. But he soon left To-day to join a new publishing firm, as editor of a publication called The Minister; finally, after two years of this, he turned to writing as his full-time occupation. He was intensely intere-sted in coins and published a book on the En-glish regal copper coinage. He is, however, best known as the creator of the charming character Kai Lung who appears in Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, Kai Lung's Golden Hours, The Wallet of Kai Lung, Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, The Mirror of Kong Ho, and The Moon of Much Gladness; he also wrote two one-act plays which are often performed at London variety theatres, and many stories and articles in leading perio-dicals. He died in 1942.

About this edition

• Publisher: Moran Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1473304830
• ISBN 13: 9781473304833
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306