Anthony Hope

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, more famous as Anthony Hope (9 February 1863 – 8 July 1933), was an English novelist and playwright. He was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels but he is remembered best for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance. Zenda has inspired many adaptations, most notably the 1937 Hollywood movie of the same name.

Anthony Hope Hawkins

Quotes

• Boys will be boys—And even that ... wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
  • "The House Opposite," Westminster Gazette (1893)

The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)

Public domain. Text available at The Prisoner of Zenda at Project Gutenberg, or at The Prisoner of Zenda at Wikisource.

• The blemishes on honourable lineage are a delicate subject, and certainly this heredity we hear so much about is the finest scandalmonger in the world; it laughs at discretion, and writes strange entries between the lines of the “Peerages”.
  • Chapter 1

• “The difference between you and Robert,” said my sister-in-law, who often (bless her!) speaks on a platform, and oftener still as if she were on one, “is that he recognizes the duties of his position, and you see the opportunities of yours.”
  “To a man of spirit, my dear Rose,” I answered, “opportunities are duties.”
  • Chapter 1

• For my part, if a man must needs be a knave, I would have him a debonair knave, and I liked Rupert Hentzau better than his long-faced, close-eyed companions. It makes your sin no worse, as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.
  • Chapter 12