Guy Boothby
1867–1905
Biography
Guy Newell Boothby (1867–1905) was an Australian-born novelist who spent most of his working life in England. Writing for the popular magazines of the 1890s, he produced a steady stream of fast-moving, melodramatic stories for readers who wanted adventure and a little danger. He died in 1905, when he was only thirty-seven.
His best-known creation is Dr Nikola, a criminal mastermind with a taste for the occult, who carries a series of novels from the mid-1890s onward. He is often regarded as a forerunner of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu. Boothby's other notable book, Pharos the Egyptian, is a Gothic tale set in Egypt that turns on mummies, a curse and supernatural revenge. Rudyard Kipling was his friend and mentor, and George Orwell later recalled Boothby's books with affection.
The site holds Doktor Nikola, in a translation by Johs. Magnussen, which gives a taste of the criminal genius at the centre of the series. Readers who enjoy it can see how Boothby combined detective-story suspense with the supernatural, a mix that made his name with the public of his day.
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Books
Doktor Nikola
by Guy Boothby (translated by Johs. Magnussen)
The mysterious Dr Nikola, with his cat and his cold charm, hires the narrator Wilfrid Bruce, a down-on-his-luck Englishman in Shanghai, to help him reach a hidden lamasery in the interior of China. There, disguised as priests, they mean to steal the secret of how to prolong…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.