M. P. Shiel - Collected Works of M. P. Shiel

The Collected Works of

M. P. SHIEL

(1865-1947)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2021

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The Collected Works of

M. P. SHIEL

By Delphi Classics, 2021

Collected Works of M. P. Shiel

First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2021.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 91348 745 4

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Matthew Phipps Shiell was born on the island of Montserrat in the West Indies in 1865.

Victorian drawing of Montserrat executed five years before the authors birth

Written in collaboration with W. T. Stead

M. P. Shiel was born and brought up in Montserrat, a British colony with a long history of slavery and exploitation. Shiels father was an Irish ship-owner, shopkeeper and lay preacher, while his mother was biracial and claimed Andalusian and North African heritage. Young Shiel received a good education in Barbados at the prestigious Harrison College, before he moved to London to pursue his career. His earliest literary works were two collections of short stories, Prince Zaleski (1895) and Shapes in the Fire (1896); they were minor successes, helping him to establish his reputation as a writer.

The Rajahs Sapphire was Shiels first novel, published in 1896 by Ward, Lock and Bowden in London. The idea of writing the book began when the journalist and editor, W. T. Stead, approached Shiel in 1893, asking him to write for his new magazine, The Daily Paper . It was intended as a spin-off from the successful and prestigious Review of Reviews journal. Stead asked Shiel to contribute work for a series that aimed to recount historical events through the medium of fictional stories. It is not known precisely how much Stead contributed to the outline of Shiels novel, but after only one edition, The Daily Paper failed and the novel remained unreleased for another three years.

It is an action adventure story centred on the crossing of paths between Stefan Von Reutlingen, a conscientious German diplomat and the dangerous, grotesquely wealthy and reckless American, Ralph Ralloner.

The first edition

Shiel as a young man

T HE M ARKGRAF S TEFAN von Reutlingen, that rising son of the corps diplomatique, was not in the best of spirits. He felt as if he lacked part of himself, like an animal whose tail has been decapitated; for, while his handsome, knit body was in close attendance on the Kaiser at the Zeughaus, in Berlin, on the particular Sunday afternoon in question, the most important organ of that same handsome body was away truant in a certain western English county. Now, a frame without a heart is like an egg without salt; and thus it was that the Kaiser frowned more than once during the day to find his brilliant protege insipid to his taste, wearing an absent look, and giving spiritless answers to the spirited questions of his volcanic sovereign.

It was the 27th of January, in this year of grace 1895, and so, of course, the birthday of Wilhelm. Stefans first task for the day had been to attend in the train of his young master at the Palast-kapelle to hear divine service. The soldier-emperor is nothing if not devout, and the days wound up with wine-libations to Mars are usually begun by him with the payment of his respects to the Nazarene carpenter. Stefan, too, like most sons of noble, old German races, had a tincture of a certain haughty piety in his composition. He rose early, full of the great day and all its details, sighed the name of a certain Ada Macdonald, called down with genuine feeling a blessing on the turbulent head of his young master, and, having ensconced his feet in the fur of a pair of wrought slippers and his back in the fur of a dressing-gown of scarlet velvet, sat down to the white napery and the silver service of a dainty private breakfast.