1. Guy Newell Boothby was a prolific Australian novelist and writer, noted for sensational fiction in variety magazines around the end of the nineteenth century.
14 Facts About Guy Boothby
1. 2.
Guy Boothby is best known for such works as the Dr Nikola series, about an occultist criminal mastermind who is a Victorian forerunner to Fu Manchu, and Pharos, the Egyptian, a tale of Gothic Egypt, mummies' curses and supernatural revenge.
3.
Guy Boothby's father was Thomas Wilde Boothby, who for a time was a member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly, three of his uncles were senior colonial administrators, and his grandfather was Benjamin Boothby, controversial judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia from 1853 to 1867.
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When Guy Boothby was aged approximately seven his English-born mother, whom he held in great regard, separated from his father and returned with her children to England.
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In 1890, aged 23, Guy Boothby wrote the libretto for Sylvia, a comic opera, published and produced at Adelaide in December 1890, and in 1891 his second show, The Jonquil: an Opera, appeared.
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Guy Boothby wrote and performed in an operetta, Dimple's Lovers, for Adelaide's Garrick Club theatre group.
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Guy Boothby was thwarted in his first bid for recognition as lack of funds forced him to disembark en route in Colombo, Sri Lanka and begin making his way homewards through South East Asia.
8.
Approximately two years later, Guy Boothby finally reached London and succeeded in having an account of his peregrinations, On the Wallaby, or Through the East and Across Australia, published in 1894.
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Guy Boothby continued to produce fiction at a ferocious rate, producing up to six novels a year across the range of genres prevalent at the fin de siecle, and is credited with producing over 53 novels in total, not to mention dozens of short stories and plays.
10.
Guy Boothby died at his home, aged 38 years, in Boscombe, near Bournemouth, from complications arising from influenza on 26 February 1905.
11.
Guy Boothby's grave is in the town's Wimborne Road Cemetery.
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Guy Boothby's oeuvre is pervaded by an array of intriguing and subversive villains whose larger than life characters eclipse the unremarkable English protagonists.
13.
Guy Boothby was once well known for his series of novels about Doctor Nikola, an occultist anti-hero seeking immortality and world domination.
14.
Guy Boothby wrote a number of ghost stories, mainly from his collections Uncle Joe's Legacy and Other Stories and The Lady on the Island.