Stingaree Rides Again

Book excerpt: Stingaree's adventures have long delighted thousands of readers. He is a stylish bushranger, his English origins cloaked in mystery, who operates in New South Wales. He is, after Raffles, the most famous character that E.W. Hornung (1866-1921) ever created. Virtually unknown, however, is the fact that twelve years after the original stories appeared Hornung started to write a fresh batch of tales, relating Stingaree's subsequent history. For various reasons, the project was abandoned but the batch of stories that he completed are now brought together in book-form for the very first time. Peter Rowland is a well-known historian and biographer. He recently transcribed and edited two of Hornung's unfinished novels, His Brother's Blood and The Graven Image, and compiled a fresh collection of Hornung short stories, Tall Tales and short'uns. A revised and much-expanded edition of his 1999 biography of Hornung will appear shortly. (For more information, see www.peterrowland.org.uk).