Simon Dale (1898), by Anthony Hope

Abstract

Perhaps Anthony Hope never wrote better than he did in The Prisoner of Zenda; his public in the 1890s thought so, and so did reviewers and fellow-novelists. Over a period of four decades the original publisher sold 300 000 copies; another 200 000 were sold in ‘editions specially arranged’, according to Hope’s biographer, Sir Charles Mallet.¹ In the United States some 260 000 copies found satisfied buyers, and thousands more were used to educate Egyptian children, as well as to entertain readers in India and Japan. Cheap editions brought out by various publishers doubtless doubled the sales that Arrowsmith had enjoyed at 3s. 6d., and Hope was not displeased, since he had wanted the novel to sell for a shilling in the first place. Edward Rose’s dramatization won large audiences in both London and New York, though its sombre tone moved the relatively light-hearted story toward tragic possibilities that Hope had not wanted to deal with.