Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope (1863-1933), was an English novelist and playwright. He was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels, and is best remembered for The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These works are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the popular genre known as Ruritanian romance, adventure romances set in similar fictional European locations. Hope initially trained as a lawyer and barrister, being called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1887, but also found time to write. His short pieces began appearing in various periodicals but he had to resort to self-publishing for his first novel, A Man of Mark (1890), which bore many similarities to Zenda, being set in a fictional country and involving political upheaval combined with humour. More novels and short stories followed, including Father Stafford in 1891, in which he sets aside the swashbuckling action-adventure of previous works and focuses on the thrills and perils of a complicated love quadrangle involving a betrothed couple, one of their female friends, and a young Anglican priest who is struggling to maintain his position of moral authority. 3