萨克斯·罗默

亚瑟·亨利·沃德（英语：Arthur Henry Ward，1883年2月15日—1959年6月1日），更常被称为萨克斯·罗默（英语：Sax Rohmer），是英国小说家。他的代表作是以傅满洲为主角的系列小说。

生活与工作

萨克斯·罗默出生于伯明翰一个爱尔兰工人阶级天主教家庭，从小完全接受工人阶级教育。罗默在集中精力全职写作之前，最初职业是公务员，后来又当过诗人、作曲家、为在音乐厅表演的喜剧小品写作的作家。

与他的同龄人阿尔杰农·布莱克伍德和亚瑟·玛臣一样，罗默声称是卡巴拉密教的派别之一黄金黎明协会的会员。他还宣称自己与玫瑰十字会有联系，但他的主张的正确性受到怀疑。他的医生和氏族朋友，R·沃森·康斯尔医师可能是他与这些组织唯一的合理联系。

罗默的作品在1903年首次被出版，《皮尔逊周刊》刊登了他的短篇小说《The Mysterious Mummy》。他的文学创作似乎主要受到了埃德加·爱伦·坡、柯南道尔及M·P·希尔的影响。

渐渐地，他从为音乐厅表演写剧本转变为专注于杂志上短篇小说与连载小说的发布。1909年，他与罗斯·伊丽莎白·洛克斯结婚。

1910年，他匿名发表了自己的第一本书：《Pause!》。

Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward (15 February 1883 – 1 June 1959), better known as Sax Rohmer, was an English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Fu Manchu.

Life and work

Born in Birmingham to working class Irish parents William Ward (c. 1850–1932), a clerk, and Margaret Mary (née Furey; c. 1850–1901), Arthur Ward initially pursued a career as a civil servant before concentrating on writing full-time. He worked as a poet, songwriter and comedy sketch writer for music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona and pursuing a career writing fiction.

Like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to one of the factions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Rohmer also claimed ties to the Rosicrucians, but the validity of his claims has been questioned. His doctor and family friend Dr. Richard Watson Councell may have been his only legitimate connection to such organisations.

His first published work was issued in 1903, when the short story "The Mysterious Mummy" was sold to Pearson's Weekly. Rohmer's main literary influences seem to have been Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and M. P. Shiel. He gradually transitioned from writing for music hall performers to concentrating on short stories and serials for magazine publication. In 1909 he married Rose Elizabeth Knox.

He published his first book Pause! anonymously in 1910.

In 1934, Sax Rohmer moved into a newly refurbished house, Little Gatton in Gatton Road, Reigate, Surrey, where he lived until 1946.

After World War II, Rohmer and his wife moved to New York, only returning to London shortly before his death. He died in 1959 at the age of 76, due to an outbreak of Asian flu.

The Fu Manchu series

After penning Little Tich in 1911 (as ghostwriter for the music hall entertainer of the same name) he wrote the first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, first published in a serialisation from October 1912 to June 1913. It was an immediate success, with its story of Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie facing the supposed worldwide conspiracy of the "Yellow Peril". The Fu Manchu stories, together with his more conventional detective series characters — Paul Harley, Gaston Max, Red Kerry, Morris Klaw (an occult detective), and the Crime Magnet — made Rohmer one of the most successful and financially well-off authors of the 1920s and 1930s.

Rohmer believed that conditions for launching a Chinese villain were ideal because the Boxer Rebellion had "started off rumors of a Yellow Peril which had not yet died down.

The first three Fu Manchu books were published in the four years between 1913 and 1917; but it was not until 1931 (some 14 years after the third book in the series) that Rohmer returned to the series with Daughter of Fu Manchu. The reason for the long interval was that Rohmer wanted to be rid of the series after The Si-Fan Mysteries. The first three books had been successfully filmed by Stoll in the twenties as a pair of serials.

Rohmer's first effort at reviving the Fu Manchu property was ultimately reworked as The Emperor of America. The original intent had been for the head of the organisation to be Fu Manchu's daughter. He kept Head Centre as a female criminal mastermind to combat Drake Roscoe, but was very unhappy with the book both as it started and in its finished form. He would later return to Drake Roscoe and his female supervillain for the Sumuru series. In the meantime, he tried again to focus his energies on what was first titled Fu Manchu's Daughter for Collier's in 1930, but with an older (now knighted) Denis Nayland Smith as the protagonist once more. The results were infinitely better and jump-started the series in the process.