Lord of the Jackals

By: Sax Rohmer

Narrated by: Mark Rice-Oxley

Sax Rohmer was born on February 15th, 1883 as Arthur Henry Sarsfield in Birmingham to working class parents.

Rohmer started his career as a civil servant but soon had ambitions to change careers and write full time.

Not content with just fiction he wrote poetry, songs as well as comedy sketches for music hall performers. From these varied beginnings he reinvented himself as Sax Rohmer.

He first published in 1903, age 20, with the short story ‘The Mysterious Mummy’ in the magazine Pearson’s Weekly. At this stage his early influences are easy to spot as he pays homage to both Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Together with his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to a popular (among creatives) faction of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (a Western esoteric tradition involving mysticism, Gnosticism, and the occult. It is the underlying philosophy and framework for magical societies such as the Golden Dawn).

His career, at this point, is one of transitioning from his earlier genres and short stories, the latter of which were in demand from the plethora of weekly and monthly magazines that were hungry for content and paid relatively well, to full length novels.

In 1909 he married Rose Elizabeth Knox to whom he would remain married until his death half a century later.

The first three Fu Manchu books were published between 1913–1917. These books were also turned into two successful serials for the cinema by Stoll in the 1920s. (Stoll was based at its own film studios located in Cricklewood, in NW London, which operated from 1920 to 1938 and was owned by Sir Oswald Stoll as the principal base for his Stoll Pictures, which also operated from Surbiton Studios. The studio was the largest in Britain at the time. It was later used for the production of quota quickies. In 1938 the studios were sold off for non-film use. Sir Oswald Stoll is perhaps better known as a theatre owner.)

In the 28 years from 1931 to 1959, Rohmer added no fewer than 10 new books to the Fu Manchu series, creating thirteen in total and, posthumously, a fourteenth with the collection The Wrath of Fu Manchu.

The Fu Manchu series drew a lot of criticism both from the Chinese government and Chinese communities for what was seen as negative and ethnic stereotyping. Whilst many critics say they were products of their time that does not avoid the conflict with modern day sensibilities.

Any writer would base a character on a friend or acquaintance and Rohmer was no different. He had made friends with the escapologist Harry Houdini, who wrote to him praising his book The Romance of Sorcery. From this relationship sprang his mystery-solving magician character Bazarada based on Houdini.

One book that stands alone in Rohmers’ works is The Orchard of Tears (1918). There are no villains or far-flung locations; instead, there are gentle rabbits and lambs in pastoral settings together with a great deal of philosophical musing, an antidote it seems to the previous few years.

The incredible commercial success of Fu Manchu had brought Rohmer both fame and fortune and he wanted to use both to allow him to explore and create other characters as well as other interests.

Rohmer also wrote several novels of supernatural horror, including Brood of the Witch-Queen, which has been described as Rohmer's masterpiece.

Unfortunately, despite his ability to generate income, Rohmer lacked the skills to properly manage his wealth and made several very poor business decisions that hobbled him throughout his career.

His final success came with a series of novels featuring a female variation on Fu Manchu, Sumuru. This series would run to five novels.

Ironically, given that today some of Rohmer’s actions are seen as bordering on racism, his works were banned in Nazi Germany and Rohmer complained loudly that he could not understand such censorship, stating "my stories are not inimical to Nazi ideals".

After World War II, Rohmer and his wife moved to New York, only returning to London shortly before his death. Sax Rohmer died on June 1st, 1959, due to an outbreak of influenza, ironically named "Asian Flu".

His wife, Rose Elizabeth, together with Cay Van Ash, her husband's former assistant, wrote a biography of Rohmer, Master of Villainy, published in 1972.

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