Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah (20 March 1868 – 27 June 1942), born Ernest Brammah Smith, was an English author. He published 21 books and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah's book, What Might Have Been, influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung and Max Carrados.

Bramah was a recluse who did not give the public details of his personal life. He died at age 74 in London.

Ernest Brammah Smith (he later changed his name to Ernest Bramah) dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School at 16, having been close to the bottom of each class in each subject. He went into farming, first as a farm pupil and then in his own right. He was supported by his father who had risen in a short time from a factory hand to a wealthy man. The farming enterprise cost his father £100,000 in today's money. It was while farming that he began to contribute local vignettes to the Birmingham News. Later he wrote a tongue-in-cheek book about his adventure in farming which found few buyers and was remaindered and pulped. After the farming debacle, his father agreed to support him while he made his way in Grub Street. He obtained a position as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome and rose to become editor of one of Jerome's magazines. After leaving Jerome he edited other journals for a publishing firm that later went into bankruptcy.

Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods.

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