Anthony Hope - Early Career and Zenda

Early Career and Zenda

Hope trained as a lawyer and barrister, being called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1887. He had time to write, as his working day was not overly full during these first years, and he lived with his widowed father, then vicar of St Bride's Church, Fleet Street.

Hope's short pieces appeared in periodicals, but for his first book he was forced to resort to a vanity press. A Man of Mark (1890) is notable primarily for its similarities to Zenda: it is set in an imaginary country, Aureataland, and features political upheaval and humour. More novels and short stories followed, including Father Stafford in 1891 and the mildly successful Mr Witt's Widow in 1892. He stood as a Liberal candidate for the Southern Division of South Bucks in the election of 1892 but was not elected. In 1893 he wrote three novels (Sport Royal, A Change of Air and Half-a-Hero) and a series of sketches that first appeared in the Westminster Gazette and were collected in 1894 as The Dolly Dialogues, illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Dolly was his first major literary success. A.E.W. Mason deemed these conversations "so truly set in the London of their day that the social historian would be unwise to neglect them" and said they were written with "delicate wit a shade of sadness."

The idea for Hope's tale of political intrigue, The Prisoner of Zenda, being the history of three months in the life of an English gentleman, came to him at the close of 1893 as he was walking in London. Hope finished the first draft in a month, and the book was in print by April. The story is set in the fictional European kingdom of 'Ruritania', a term which has come to mean 'the novelist's and dramatist's locale for court romances in a modern setting.' Zenda achieved instant success, and its witty protagonist, the debonair Rudolf Rassendyll, became a well-known literary creation. The novel was praised by Mason, the literary critic Andrew Lang, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The popularity of Zenda convinced Hope to give up the "brilliant legal career seemed to lie ahead of him" to become a full-time writer, but he "never again achieved such complete artistic success as in this one book." Also in 1894, Hope produced The God in the Car, a political story.

The sequel to Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau, begun in 1895 and serialised in the Pall Mall Magazine, did not appear between hard covers until 1898. A prequel entitled The Heart of Princess Osra, a collection of short stories set about 150 years before Zenda, appeared in 1896. Hope also co-wrote, with Edward Rose, the first stage adaptation of Zenda, which appeared on the London stage that year. Hope alone wrote the dramatic adaptation of Rupert of Hentzau in 1899.