Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman

Art for art's sake is a vile catchword, but I confess it appeals to me'

Gentleman by day and thief by night, A. J. Raffles lives a double life. Taking 'Art for art's sake' as his motto, Raffles supports his debonair lifestyle by performing lucrative, artistic, and ingenious burglaries of the wealthy elite of Victorian London. Dedicated to his brother-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle, Hornung's first collection of Raffles stories, The Amateur Cracksman (1899), can be seen as an inverted spin-off of the former's celebrated detective stories. But it is Raffles' outlaw status that has drawn generations of readers to these swift-paced tales of a charismatic and cool-headed thief and his less worldly partner, Bunny. Hornung had Oscar Wilde in mind as much as Sherlock Holmes when he created Raffles, and the account of their double life offers one of the turn of the century's most touching accounts of a same-sex couple.

Frequently adapted for stage and screen, Hornung's original stories have never lost their power to captivate readers. Admired by writers like George Orwell, Graham Greene, and Anthony Powell, Hornung's crisp prose evokes a late Victorian London of clubland bachelors, hansom cabs, champagne suppers, Australian heiresses, and South African diamond moguls.

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