Stingaree

393+[4 ad] pages with frontispiece and 7 other illustrations. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's green cloth with pictorial to cover and gilt lettering to spine and green lettering to cover. Illustrations by George W Lambert. First American edition.

E W Hornung was the third son of John Peter Hornung, a Hungarian, and was born in Middlesbrough. He was educated at Uppingham during some of the later years of its great headmaster, Edward Thring. He spent most of his life in England and France, but in 1884 left for Australia and stayed for two years where he working as a tutor at Mossgiel station. Although his Australian experience had been so short, it colored most of his literary work from A Bride from the Bush published in 1899, to Old Offenders and a few Old Scores, which appeared after his death. After he returned from Australia in 1886, he married Constance Doyle, the sister of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893. Hornung published the poems Bond and Free and Wooden Crosses in The Times. The character of A. J. Raffles, a "gentleman thief", first appeared in Cassell's Magazine in 1898 and the stories were later collected as The Amateur Cracksman (1899). Other titles in the series include The Black Mask (1901), A Thief in the Night (1905), and the full-length novel Mr. Justice Raffles (1909). He also co-wrote the play Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman with Eugene Presbrey in 1903.

Originally published in 1905, these are the adventures of a Australian bushranger in the Riverina and North Eastern Victoria, where the author lived for a period of his life. Stingaree was made into a movie of the same name, and earlier was filmed as a 12 episode silent film series.

Condition:

Corners bumped, spine ends and corners moderately rubbed else a very good copy lacking jacket.