Victor Rousseau Emanuel

Victor Rousseau Emanuel, originally born as Avigdor Rousseau Emanuel, was born 2 January 1879 in England to Joel Emanuel and Georgiana Rousseau. He died 6 April 1960 in Tarryton, New York. Primarily a writer of pulp fiction, he was active in Great Britain and the United States during the first half of the 20th century. Regarding the first two decades of his career, he wrote predominantly under the pen names Victor Rousseau, H. M. Egbert, and V. R. Emanuel, but, come the 1930s, officially abandoned these and numerous others in favor of establishing Victor Rousseau as a recognizable name in the pulp fiction field.

Emanuel enrolled at Harrow in 1892 and Balliol College Oxford in 1896. Due to unfortunate circumstances, he departed London and sailed south to Cape Town. For the next two years, he traveled South Africa, landing odd jobs as he went. While in Johannesburg, he learned the newspaper trade, landing a job with the Standard and Diggers' News and then the Transvaal Leader. With the hue and cry of the Boer War in full swing, Emanuel enlisted with Bethune's Mounted Infantry in 1899, but was discharged about 35 days later. Nearly a month later, he registered with the Colonial Scouts at Pietermaritzburg, and was officially discharged four months later, in April 1900.

With his brief life experiences in South Africa and his involvement in the Boer War, he returned to London and readily sold his first novel, Derwent's Horse. This was a fictional, humorous account of two recruits within the spoofed Bethune's Mounted Infantry. With the proceeds from this novel, Emanuel realized that in journalism lay his future, and set sail again, this time for New York City, in June 1901.

While between jobs in 1902, he began writing his second novel, Spartacus. It was written along the lines of Gustave Flaubert's novel, Salammbo. Three years after he began, he submitted it to Houghton-Mifflin in September 1905. It was rejected as a weak novel with poor characterization.

That same year, Emanuel assisted with the Jewish Encyclopedia, published by Funk & Wagnalls in 1905 and 1906.

His earliest known fiction output appeared in late 1905, in the form of children's vignettes, syndicated nationally, carrying the byline V. R. Emanuel.

From early 1906 through 1907, he wrote regional Florida special articles for the Baltimore American. He took on an editorial post with Will Carleton's Every Where magazine in mid-1907. Here, he also created the alias Egbert Prentice. This, upon departure, morphed into the famous H. M. Egbert alias. Emanuel made his first official professional magazine sale, with the short Canadian frozen North tale, "The Last Cartridge," in The Munsey (1907 September).

Come 1908, he landed an editorial position with Harper's Weekly, a position he retained for three years. It is here that H. M. Egbert makes its earliest known debut, within the 26 December 1908 edition, attached to an article, rather than a fiction story. While employed by Harper & Brothers, he wrote special articles and the occasional short story. Stories he or the staff deemed unfit for Harper's Weekly were sold to the Illustrated Sunday Magazine, a nationally syndicated publication that was a subdivision of the Buffalo Times. Stories that failed to meet with this editor's approval were likewise circulated to lesser syndicates.

...
Wikipedia