Ernest Bramah

Reproduction of the original: The Secret of the League by Ernest Bramah

Reproduction of the original: Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah

Reproduction of the original: The Secret of the League by Ernest Bramah

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We havent used any OCR or photocopy to produce this book. The whole book has been typeset again to produce it without any errors or poor pictures and errant marks.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We havent used any OCR or photocopy to produce this book. The whole book has been typeset again to produce it without any errors or poor pictures and errant marks.

Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung is a storyteller in an imagined China, telling tales of earnest examination candidates, corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, alchemical potions, grasping merchants, and assorted other stereotypes from the Western imagination of China. Bramah makes no attempt to depict any kind of historical reality, but uses the setting to allow his invention and fantasy free rein, to free himself from the confines of the mundane. The sentiment and some aspects of the setting are clearly late-Victorian, with juxtaposition of the two worlds sometimes used for comic effect.

This lively and amusing set of stories, constructed as a series of letters dealing with the oddities and eccentricities of the West, are purportedly by Kong Ho, a Chinese man visiting early 20th century London. These letters, addressed to his homeland, refer to the Westerners in London as barbarians and reinterpret many elements of modern life (such as the motor car and the piano) with the wit, wisdom and wry sense of humor that suffuses the best of Bramah's Oriental works.

Man is born to make. His business is to construct; to plan; to carry out the plan: to fit together, and to produce a finished thing. That human art in which it is most difficult to achieve this end and in which it is far easier to neglect it than in any other is the art of writing. Yet this much is certain, that unconstructed writing is at once worthless and ephemeral; and nearly the whole of our modern English writing is unconstructed, The matter of survival is perhaps not the most important, though it is a test of a kind, and it is a test which every serious writer feels most intimately.

Sightless detective Max Carrados solved his first cases in Edwardian London, in the early days of the 20th century when the city was the beating heart of the vast British Empire. This collection contains the very best tales of the blind sleuth, 10 adventures that range from his first challenge, "The Coin of Dionysus," to mysteries set during the World War I era and the early 1920s. Like Sherlock Holmes, Max Carrados debuted in The Strand magazine, and his stories rivaled those of the Baker Street detective in popularity. Since then, compilation volumes of the frequently anthologized tales have long been out of print and hard to find. This collection offers an excellent introduction to the suave private investigator whose deductive skills are surpassed only by his perceptive powers, which enable him to hear a heartbeat from across the room. Carrados' creator, Ernest Bramah, was one of the few authors in the early days of detective fiction who could combine physical and intellectual thrills with imagination and stylistic brilliance. Brimming with charm and humor, these vintage stories are utterly unique in the field of detective literature.