![]() He was marketed as the 'King of Thrillers' and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. ![]() Walton's Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury's and R. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship's cook. ![]() ![]() Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. ![]()
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