Anthony Hope

Anthony Hope is the pseudonym of Anthony Hope Hawkins, a successful and prolific author of fiction and drama. The son of a school headmaster, Hope was born in London in 1863. While practicing law, Hope also experimented with creative writing, and he published his first novel, a political satire entitled A Man of Mark, at his own expense in 1890. With the publication of his most famous novel, The Prisoner of Zenda, in 1894, Hope abandoned his legal career to write full-time, penning the short story collection, The Heart of Princess Osra (1896), and the Zenda sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). Throughout his productive life, Hope published a wide variety of fiction, in areas ranging from the light domestic comedy of The Dolly Dialogues (1894) to the more serious fiction of Simon Dole (1889). He died on July 8, 1933.