Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was a prolific British writer of crime and adventure fiction, born in Greenwich, Kent. He began as a journalist and war correspondent during the Second Boer War before turning to fiction, ultimately writing more than 170 novels, 18 stage plays, and 957 short stories across a career that made him one of the best-selling authors of the twentieth century; by 1928, roughly one in four books read in Britain had come from his pen. His creations include The Four Just Men, the colonial adventure Sanders of the River, the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and The Green Archer. He co-wrote the screenplay for King Kong (1933), dying in Los Angeles before the film's release, and more than 160 films have since been adapted from his work.