ABOUT A.J. RAFFLES

Arthur J. Raffles is a character created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung, a brother-in-law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes—he is a “gentleman thief,” living in the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. He is called the “Amateur Cracksman,” and often, at first, differentiates between himself and the “professors”—professional criminals from the lower classes.

As Holmes has Dr. Watson to chronicle his adventures, Raffles has Harry “Bunny” Manders—a former schoolmate saved from disgrace and suicide by Raffles, whom Raffles persuaded to accompany him on a burglary. While Raffles often takes advantage of Manders’ relative innocence, and sometimes treats him with a certain amount of contempt, he knows that Manders’ bravery and loyalty are to be relied on utterly. In several stories, Manders saves the day for the two of them after Raffles gets into situations he cannot get out of on his own.

One of the things that Raffles has in common with Holmes is a mastery of disguise—during his days as an ostensible man-about-town, he maintains a studio apartment in another name in which he keeps the components of various disguises. He can imitate the regional speech of many parts of Britain flawlessly, and is fluent in Italian.

The complete adventures of A.J. Raffles are included in The Raffles Megapack. For this volume, we have chosen to sample only one Raffles story, “A Costume Piece,” since no volume of Victorian Villains would be complete with A.J. Raffles!