Sax Rohmer was born Arthur Henry Ward in 1883, in Birmingham, England, adding “Sarsfield” to his name in 1901. He was four years old when Sherlock Holmes appeared in print, five when the Jack the Ripper murders began, and sixteen when H.G. Wells’ Martians invaded.
Initially pursuing a career as a civil servant, he turned to writing as a journalist, poet, comedy sketch writer, and songwriter in British music halls. At age 20 he submitted the short story “The Mysterious Mummy” to Pearson’s magazine and “The Leopard-Couch” to Chamber’s Journal. Both were published under the byline “A. Sarsfield Ward.”
Ward’s Bohemian associates Cumper, Bailey, and Dodgson gave him the nickname “Digger,” which he used as his byline on several serialized stories. Then, in 1908, the song “Bang Went the Chance of a Lifetime” appeared under the byline “Sax Rohmer.” Becoming immersed in theosophy, alchemy, and mysticism, Ward decided the name was appropriate to his writing, so when “The Zayat Kiss” first appeared in The Story-Teller magazine in October, 1912, it was credited to Sax Rohmer.
That was the first story featuring Fu-Manchu, and the first portion of the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu. Novels such as The Yellow Claw, Tales of Secret Egypt, Dope, The Dream Detective, The Green Eyes of Bast, and Tales of Chinatown made Rohmer one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.
There are fourteen Fu-Manchu novels, and the character has been featured in radio, television, comic strips, and comic books. He first appeared in film in 1923, and has been portrayed by such actors as Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Sellers, and Nicolas Cage.
Rohmer died in 1959, a victim of an outbreak of the type A influenza known as the Asian flu.