6.8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 1975 Genre Speculative fiction | 3.4/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Return of A. J. Raffles, first published in 1975, is an Edwardian comedy play in three acts, written by Graham Greene and based somewhat loosely on E. W. Hornung's characters in The Amateur Cracksman. Set in the late summer of the year 1900, the story revolves around the infamous burglar and cricketer, A. J. Raffles—presumed dead in the Boer War—who returns to Albany where, with his friends Bunny and Lord Alfred Douglas, he plots to rob the Marquess of Queensberry, partly for the money and partly for revenge against the Marquess for his treatment of their friend Oscar Wilde. The robbery takes place at The Marquess' house in Hertfordshire, where Raffles and Bunny are interrupted by the Prince of Wales and a Scotland Yard detective, who discover the Prince's personal letters have also been stolen.
Contents
Characters
Author's note
Graham Greene precedes the published version of the play with an author's note, which explains the story cannot of course be accepted as strictly true to history:
I have in one respect seriously deviated from the truth – the Marquess of Queensberry met his end in January 1900 and I have extended his life into the late summer of that year.... On the other hand the gold box presented by the theatrical profession to the Prince of Wales is in no way fictitious.... And I am prepared to defend the truth of Raffles' return from South Africa alive. His chronicler, and his close companion, Bunny, wrote a moving account of Raffles' death and claimed to have been beside him when he was 'killed', but Bunny had every reason for falsifying history, to disguise the fact that, far from being in South Africa, he was, at the date of Spion Kop, incarcerated in Reading Gaol, where he had the good fortune to meet Oscar Wilde.