Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (a.k.a., J.G. Reeder) was born into poverty as an illegitimate child in Greenwich, England, on April 1, 1875. Although he left school at the age of twelve, he was to become one of England’s most prolific writers. Wallace joined the British army at age 21 as a war correspondent in the second Boer War in South Africa. He moved to London from South Africa in debt, and decided to write thriller books to make money.
Wallace was inspired by Rudyard Kipling, whom he had encountered in Cape Town in 1878. He wrote The Four Just Men in 1905. Overall, Wallace developed eighteen stage plays, 957 short stories, and had over 170 novels (twelve in 1929 alone). He was able to produce so many works because he recorded his stories onto wax cylinders which were then typed by secretaries.
Probably his most famous creation was King Kong. More than 160 films were based on his stories. Wallace moved to Hollywood to write movie scripts for RKO Pictures. In fact, he died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes in Beverly Hills, California, on February 10, 1932, while he was working on the script for the 1933 movie King Kong.
Hemelein Publications works:
- “The Black Grippe” in Killing London (2021)
- “The Day the World Stopped” in Killing London (2021)
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