MACHINE MAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1941, Page 6

MACHINE MAN

EDGAR WALLACE'S CAREER. Was he man or machine? He was a man, for he lived a life as interesting and vivid as anyone could wish for, but he seems to have been a machine, for he worked as rhythmically and quickly as any piece of mechanism. His name, of course, was Edgar Wallace. A novelist and playwright, he was born in London in 1375. but we do not know who his parents were, for he was abandoned, and was found as a baby of nine days by a fish-porter of Billingsgate, who brought him. up and sent him to school.

So his beginning was as strange as some of his books. A board school career was all the education he ever had. He earned his first savings by selling papers. Then he entered the army and was drafted to South Africa. In spare moments he practised journalism, was made Renter's war correspondent in the South African War. and gradually won a place in modern journalism till he sprang into fame in 1906 with his adventure stories, "The Four Just Men,” and "The Three Just Men.” From that day till he died suddenly in 1932 he never stopped writing. This is almost literally true. A man of enormous energy and tremendous creative ability, he published no less than 150 novels, 14 plays, film scenarios and other pieces of work. His unbelievable activity was cut short while at Hollywood. As a writer of detective thrillers he had no equal. Probably no writer ever enjoyed world-wide popularity like his.