Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman

In 1898, in Cassell’s Magazine, Ernest Hornung published his first story about a Victorian-era burglar named Raffles. The magazine sold out instantly—Hornung essentially “woke up” famous. Throughout the rest of his life, stories about Raffles never let go of the author.

Literary critics praised Hornung’s tales highly, noting their high literary style and extraordinary inventiveness of plots. Perhaps the character’s unusual popularity came from his defining traits, the turn-of-the-century atmosphere, and the end of the Victorian era—marked, as was often said, by dissatisfaction with both internal and external politics. And the burglar became the first anti-hero who provided an outlet for the накопичене невдоволення.

Another possible reason for Raffles’s fame—and for his assistant Harry Menders, nicknamed Bunny (the Rabbit)—was the caricature-like resemblance to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (as memoirs report, Conan Doyle didn’t just approve of, but actively encouraged, this parody of his relative). Hornung’s stories were so popular that the name “Raffles” became a common noun, and the image of a thief with gentlemanly manners became one of the key images left behind by the Victorian era.