Ernest Bramah

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Ernest Bramah
Ernest Bramah.png
Portrait of Ernest Bramah
Born Ernest Brammah Smith
(1868-03-20)March 20, 1868
Manchester
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Somerset

Ernest Bramah (20 March 1868[1] – 27 June 1942), born Ernest Brammah Smith, was an English author.[2] He published 21 books and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah's book, What Might Have Been, influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados.

Bramah was a very private man who chose not to make public any details of his personal life. He died at the age of 74 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Early career

Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Ernest Brammah Smith (he later changed the spelling of his middle name to Ernest Bramah) dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School at 16, having been close to the bottom of each class in each subject. He went into farming, first as a farm pupil and then in his own right. He was supported by his father who had risen in a short time from a factory hand to a wealthy man. The farming enterprise cost his father £100,000 in today's money. It was while farming that he began to contribute local vignettes to the Birmingham News. Later he wrote a tongue-in-cheek book about his adventure in farming which found few buyers and was remaindered and pulped. After the farming debacle, his father agreed to support him while he made his way in Grub Street. He obtained a position as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome and rose to become editor of one of Jerome's magazines. After leaving Jerome he edited other journals for a publishing firm that later went into bankruptcy.

Writing career

Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods.[3]

With Kai Lung, Bramah invented a form of Mandarin English illustrated by the following passages:

  • "Kai Lung rose guardedly to his feet, with many gestures of polite assurance and having bowed several times to indicate his pacific nature, he stood in an attitude of deferential admiration. At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension to conceal the direction of her flight".[4]
  • "In particular, there is among this august crowd of Mandarins one Wang Yu, who has departed on three previous occasions without bestowing the reward of a single cash. If the feeble and covetous Wang Yu will place in his very ordinary bowl the price of one of his exceedingly ill-made pipes, this unworthy person will proceed."[5]
  • "After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture-maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants."[6]

The Kai Lung stories are studded with proverbs and aphorisms, such as the following:

  • "He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains"[7]
  • "It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in low-class teashops"[8]
  • "It has been said there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night"[9]

Bramah also wrote political science fiction. What might Have Been, published in 1907 and republished as The Secret of the League in 1909), is an anti-socialist dystopia reflecting Bramah's conservative political views.[10] It was acknowledged by George Orwell as a source for Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell credited it with giving a considerably accurate prediction of the rise of Fascism.[11]

At a time when the English Channel had yet to be crossed by an aeroplane, Bramah foresaw aerial express trains travelling at 10,000 feet, a nationwide wireless-telegraphy network, a proto-fax machine and a cypher typewriter similar to the German Enigma machine.[citation needed]

In 1914, Bramah created Max Carrados, a blind detective. Given the outlandish idea that a blind man could be a detective, in the introduction to the second Carrados book The Eyes of Max Carrados Bramah compared his hero's achievements to those of real-life blind people such as Nicholas Saunderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Blind Jack of Knaresborough the road builder, John Fielding the Bow Street Magistrate of whom it was said he could identify 3,000 thieves by their voices, and Helen Keller.

Interesting times

Bramah has been credited with the invention of the saying, widely quoted as an ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times", along with "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for".[12] However, these do not appear in the Kai Lung stories.

Bibliography

Kai Lung books

Original

Reprints

  • The Kai Lung Omnibus (1936; includes The Wallet of Kai Lung, Kai Lung's Golden Hours, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat)
  • The Celestial Omnibus (1940; selected stories from the earlier books)
  • Kai Lung: Six (1974)
  • Kai Lung Raises His Voice (2010; includes Kai Lung: Six, the story from The Specimen Case and four previously unpublished stories)

Max Carrados books

Original

  • Max Carrados (1914)
  • The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923)
  • Max Carrados Mysteries (1927)
  • The Bravo of London (1934)

Reprints

  • Best Max Carrados Detective Stories (1972)
  • The Eyes of Max Carrados (2013) contains Max Carrados, The Eyes of Max Carrados, Max Carrados Mysteries and A Bunch of Violets from The Specimen Case

Max Carrados short stories

Other fiction

  • The Mirror of Kong Ho (1905)
  • The Secret of the League (1907)
  • The Specimen Case (1924), which includes a Kai Lung story and a Max Carrados story[13], A Bunch of Violets
  • Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday (1929)
  • A Little Flutter (1930)

Other short stories

Nonfiction

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

Short non-fiction

Adaptations by Others

  • In the Dark (1917) - Gilbert Heron

References

  1. ↑ Entry of Birth in 2nd Quarter 1868 Register, Hulme, Chorlton, Lancashire, volume 8C, p. 739.
  2. ↑ The most recent biographical source is: Aubrey Wilson, The Search for Ernest Bramah (Creighton and Read 2007).
  3. ↑ David Langford, "Bramah, Ernest" in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, edited by John Clute and John Grant, 1997, Orbit (pp. 135-36).
  4. ↑ Bramah, Ernest (1922). Kai Lung's Golden Hours. London: Grant Richards Ltd., p. 9.
  5. ↑ Bramah, Ernest (1900). The Wallet of Kai Lung. London: Grant Richards, p. 124.
  6. ↑ Bramah (1922), p. 174.
  7. ↑ Bramah (1922), p. 57.
  8. ↑ Bramah (1900), p. 6.
  9. ↑ Bramah (1922), p. 264.
  10. ↑ John Clute, "Bramah, Ernest", in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by Clute and Peter Nicholls, Orbit, 1993 (pp. 15–56).
  11. ↑ George Orwell, "Predictions of Fascism", originally published in the Tribune on 12 July 1940, appearing in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 2, pp. 47–48).
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Hubin, Allen J. Crime Fiction: 1749–1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography. New York and London: Garland Publishing (1984); ISBN 0-8240-9219-8

External links

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