Edgar Wallace - Six of the Best

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.

Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best.

In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words.

These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.

Richard Horatio Edgar Freeman was born illegitimately and into poverty on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. He was fostered and had a happy childhood, but left school at 12 because of truancy. Menial jobs followed; selling newspapers, working in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship’s cook.

In 1894 he broke off his engagement to enlist in the Infantry and a posting to South Africa. There he changed his name to Wallace; from Lew Wallace, the author of ‘Ben-Hur’. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to write. His first collection of ballads was successful and paid for his way out of the army. He now became a war correspondent for Reuters and later the Daily Mail.

By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, ‘The Four Just Men’. Since nobody would publish it, he set up his own publishing company, Tallis Press. Although it sold well it was financially mismanaged and Wallace was bailed out by the Mail's proprietor Alfred Harmsworth, who was anxious that the episode not damage the newspaper’s reputation. Wallace was fired in 1907 after getting the Mail embroiled in libel suits following his inaccurate filings.

Some months later he travelled to the Congo Free State, to report on Belgian atrocities. He also wrote, and had serialised by the Weekly Tale-Teller, fiction that was published in the best-selling collection, ‘Sanders of the River’.

Now with a large income he wrote full-time and began his own racing papers and to gamble. For Wallace exceptionally high income brought with it exceptionally large spending and debts.

In 1921 he signed with Hodder and Stoughton and was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers’ with a trademark image of trilby, cigarette holder and Rolls Royce.

He was able to produce a 70,000 word novel in three days. It is claimed that by 1928 one in four books read was written by Wallace. Eventually he wrote a total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories. One ambition remained: To conquer Hollywood and his works turned into celluloid dreams.

In early 1932 he suffered sudden, severe headaches and was diagnosed with diabetes. His condition escalated sharply, and he deteriorated within days.

Edgar Wallace died of diabetes and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in Beverly Hills. He was 56.

© 2025 Six of the Best (E-bog): 9781806373505

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E-bog: 4. november 2025