Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1883-1959) was as flamboyant a portrayal of an author as you could hope to find. A man of mystery, sorcery, dark secrets could not be named Art Ward. Ol’ Sax isn’t really politically correct these days but his mystique is still with us in the recollections of Yellow Peril novels. Author of 42 books, only his Fu Manchu is really remembered (if not read) these days. That is probably thanks to the films that Hollywood made with 13 different actors, from Arthur Hughes to Nicholas Cage. Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee are more familiar.
What I like to see here and there about the Internet are images from the magazines and newspapers that serialized the stories and books before they were turned into hard covers then later garish paperbacks. It can be easy to forget how big a draw he was back in the day. Like Edgar Rice Burroughs or Zane Grey or (now) other less familiar authors like Hulbert Footner or Jeffery Farnol, Rohmer was a BIG writer after the turn of the century. One of his stories deserved a good illustration. He was lucky to have Joseph Clement Coll do many of them.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH CLEMENT COLL
It’s nice to see a listing of Sax Rohmer and Dr. Fu Manchu. I also have the Sumuru paperbacks (they are the first American edition; the British versions were in hardcover, if I remember correctly).