Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah Ernest Brammah Smith ( born March 20, 1868 in Manchester, † June 27, 1942 in London ) was an English writer who published 21 books and numerous short stories and other works during his lifetime.

His humorous works are compared with those of Jerome K. Jerome and William Wymark Jacobs, as well as his detective stories with those of Conan Doyle, his political science fiction stories with HG Wells and his story to the supernatural with those of Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell noted saying that Bramahs book What Might Have Been having influenced his own novel in 1984. In addition, he created his then-popular literary characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados.

Life

Ernest Bramah was born on March 20, 1868 as the son of a wealthy businessman, who had himself worked his way up in no time, in Manchester. Bramah left at age 16 the Manchester Grammar School, although he had always been one of the best in all subjects. Then he turned to agriculture, first as a simple farm worker, later as owner of a small farm, where his father with considerable financial resources, converted £ 100,000 in today's currency, supported. During this time Bramah wrote shorter regional sketches for the Birmingham News. He then wrote a book about his adventures of farm life, which was only a few buyers, and was scrapped. After this agricultural debacle, his father explained agree to continue to give him financial support in its path in journalism and writing.

Bramah reached the position of secretary of Jerome K. Jerome and rose to become editor of its magazine, The Minister. After he left Jerome, he published other journals for publication society, but later had to declare bankruptcy.

Bramah reached commercial and literary success with his creation of the Chinese Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. This first appeared in the history of The Wallet of Kai Lung, which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards she accepted and published in 1900. In print, these humorous stories or fairy tales in which crop up fantasy elements like dragons and gods and Bramah constructed a veritable Mandarin -English until today. Brahmah had probably learned as a young man several wealthy Chinese who still hochritualisierte, extremely polite way of speaking of the pre-revolutionary Middle Kingdom was common, in the example, the "I" was replaced by " this person", effusive compliments toward the addressee, unsafe allegations against one's own person and extremely many circumlocutions were used. Tell Technically Bramah formed to a certain extent for the Near East brand of Orientalism from.

Bramah also wrote political science fiction. His book What Might Have Been ( 1907), later published as The Secret of the League (1909 ) is an anti-socialist dystopia that reflects Bramahs own conservative worldview. George Orwell described this book as one of his sources for 1984. Orwell himself praised the little-known novella Bramahs, which also bears the title The Secret of the League ( 1907) and was made ​​a remarkable prediction of the rise of fascism. In this book, a sozialisitische government raised taxes on the middle class greatly expanded the welfare state and the bureaucracy of extreme and caused a pension crisis before it was struck by a general stock market crash.

At a time when the English Channel was just crossed by a plane by Louis Blériot, Bramah Express airplane lines looked at 10,000 feet, a national telegraph network, the fax machine and a code typewriter ahead that resembled quite the enigma.

1914 Bramah created the literary character of the blind detective Max Carrados. Having already the remote idea that a blind detective might be, he compared in the introduction to the second Carrados novel The Eyes of Max Carrados the commitment of his hero with the lives of real blind man of his nation as Nicholas Saunderson, professor of mathematics at Cambridge, the road builder John Metcalf also known as blind Jack of Knaresborough, the London judge and magistrate John Fielding, of whom it was said that he could identify 3,000 thieves simply because of their voices, and Helen Keller. However, one must add that Bramah ' exaggerating when describing the exaggerated other sensitive abilities Carrados: Carrados, the otherwise his butler Parkinson assisted should even be able to due to the sensitivity of his fingertips to be able to read an ordinary newspaper.

The Max Carrados stories appeared parallel to those of Sherlock Holmes in The beach Magazine, achieved high sales figures and outdid even temporarily the world today more famous competitors.

Bramah lived in seclusion and was little award on his private life. At 74, he died on June 27, 1942 as a successful author, who had all his life acquired a large general knowledge and was an expert in Numismatikerkreisen.

Works (selection)

Kai Lung novels and stories

• The Wallet of Kai Lung. Saltwater Verlag, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-8460-1851-4 ( Nachdr d ed London 1900).
• Kai Lung 's Golden Hours. OUP, Hong Kong, 1985, ISBN 0-19-583976-5 ( Nachdr d outputs London 1922).
• Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat Richards Press, London, 1960 ( Nachdr d ed London 1928).
• The Moon of Much Gladness. Related by Kai Lung. Cassell, London, 1932.
• The Kai Lung omnibus. Allan Books, London, 1936.
• Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree. Richards Press, London 1940.
• The Celestial Omnibus. Richards Press, London, 1963 ( Nachdr d ed London 1940).
• Kai Lung. Six; uncollected stories from Punch. Non -profit Press, Tacomah, Wash. In 1974.
• Kai Lung Raises His Voice. Durrant Publ, Norwich 2010, ISBN 978-1-905946-10-5.

Max Carrados novels

• Max Carrados. Hyperion Press, Westport, Conn., 1975, ISBN 0-88355-200-0 ( Nachdr d ed London 1914). Dr. Carrados ( Lutz- detective novels, Vol 12). Neufeld & Henius, Berlin 1930.

• Dr. Carrados and his servant ( Lutz- detective novels, Vol 13). Neufeld & Henius, Berlin 1930.

• Max Carrados, the blind detective. Classic Crime Stories. Heyne, München, 1973 ( translation by Christiane Nogly ).

Other novels, novellas and short stories

• The Mirror of Kong Ho London 1905.
• The Secret of the League. The story of a social was. Nelson, London, 1907.
• The Specimen Case. Doran Publ, New York, 1924.
• Short Stories of To- day and Yesterday. Harrap, London, 1929.
• A Little Flutter. Cassell, London, 1930.

• The Mirror of Kong Ho London 1930.
• The Moon of Much Gladness. London 1932.

Non-fiction

• English Farming and Why I Turned It Up. Leadenhall Press, London 1894 ( autobiography).
• A Guide to the Varieties and Rarity of English Regal Copper Coins. Charles II - Victoria, 1671-1860. Methuen, London, 1929.