View source for Guy Boothby

{{short description|Australian writer}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox writer
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| name             = Guy Boothby
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| image            = Guy_Boothby_1896.png
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| alt              = 
| caption          = Guy Boothy in 1896
| native_name      = 
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| pseudonym        = 
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| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1867|10|13|df=yes}}
| birth_place      = [[Adelaide]], [[Colony of South Australia]]
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|1905|02|26|1867|10|13|df=yes}}
| death_place      = [[Boscombe]], United Kingdom
| resting_place    = Wimborne Road Cemetery, Boscombe
| occupation       = Colonial administrator<br>Author
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| period           = 
| genre            = Ghost stories<br>Adventure<br>Travel
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| movement         = 
| notable_works    = Dr Nikola series
| spouse           = <!-- or: | spouses = -->
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| children         = 
| relatives        = [[T. Wilde Boothby]] (father)<br>[[Benjamin Boothby]] (grandfather)<br>[[William Boothby]] (uncle)
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| signature        = Signature of Guy Newell Boothby (1867–1905).png
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'''Guy Newell Boothby''' (13 October 1867 – 26 February 1905) was a prolific Australian novelist and writer, noted for sensational fiction in variety magazines around the end of the nineteenth century. He lived mainly in England. He is best known for such works as the Dr Nikola series, about an occultist criminal mastermind who is a [[Victorian era|Victorian]] forerunner to [[Fu Manchu]], and ''Pharos, the Egyptian'', a tale of Gothic Egypt, mummies' curses and supernatural revenge. [[Rudyard Kipling]] was his friend and mentor, and his books were remembered with affection by [[George Orwell]].<ref>Mark Valentine, "Introduction" in Guy Boothby, ''Dr Nikola, Master Criminal''. Herts UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2009, pp. xi–xii. x</ref>

==Biography==
Boothby was born in Adelaide to a prominent family in the recently established British colony of South Australia.<ref>{{Cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |title=Guy Newell Boothby (1867–1905) |id2=boothby-guy-newell-5293 |year=1979 |volume=7 |access-date=23 August 2025}}</ref> His father was [[Thomas Wilde Boothby]],<ref>{{Cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |first=G. N. |last=Hawker |title=Thomas Wilde Boothby (1839–1885) |id2=boothby-thomas-wilde-3323 |year=1969 |volume=3 |access-date=23 August 2025}}</ref> who for a time was a member of the [[South Australian Legislative Assembly]], three of his uncles were senior colonial administrators, and his grandfather was [[Benjamin Boothby]] (1803–1868), controversial judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia from 1853 to 1867.<ref>{{Cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |first=Alex C. |last=Castles|title=Benjamin Boothby (1803–1868) |id2=boothby-benjamin-3025 |year=1969 |volume=3 |access-date=23 August 2025}}</ref> When Boothby was aged approximately seven his English-born mother, whom he held in great regard, separated from his father and returned with her children to England. There he received a traditional English grammar school education at Salisbury, Lord Weymouth's Grammar (now [[Warminster School]]) and [[Christ's Hospital]], London.<ref name="Thesis">{{Cite thesis | degree = PhD | title = Guy Boothby : the Dr. Nikola novels (1895–1901)
 | url = http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/2765/12/merged.pdf | last = Zampieri | first = Emilio |year = 2010 | publisher = Università degli Studi di Padova | accessdate = 7 July 2011 | oclc = 664681561 }}</ref>

Following this, Boothby returned alone to South Australia at 16, where, in his turn, he entered the colonial administration as private secretary to the mayor of Adelaide, [[Lewis Cohen (mayor)|Lewis Cohen]],<ref name="Valentine-px">Mark Valentine, "Introduction" in Guy Boothby, ''Dr Nikola, Master Criminal''. Herts UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2009, p. x</ref>  but was "not contented" with the work.<ref name="AdvertiserObit">{{cite news | date = 1 March 1905 | title = Obituary: Mr. Guy Boothby | work = [[The Advertiser (Adelaide)|The Advertiser]]}}</ref> Despite Boothby's family tradition of colonial service, his natural inclinations ran more to the creative than to the administrative and he was not satisfied with his limited role as a provincial colonial servant. In 1890, aged 23, Boothby wrote the libretto for ''Sylvia'', a comic opera, published and produced at Adelaide in December 1890, and in 1891 his second show, ''The Jonquil: an Opera'', appeared. He also wrote and performed in an operetta, ''Dimple's Lovers'', for Adelaide's [[Garrick Club (Adelaide)|Garrick Club]] theatre group. The music in each case was written by [[Cecil James Sharp]]. His early literary ventures were directed at the theatre, but his ambition was not appeased by the lukewarm response his melodramas received in Adelaide. When severe economic collapse hit most of the Australian colonies in the early 1890s, he followed the well-beaten path to London in December 1891.<ref name="VictorianSubject">{{cite web | last = Bulfin | first = Ailise | title = Guy Boothby's "Bid for Fortune": Constructing an Anglo-Australian colonial identity for the fin-de-siècle London literary marketplace | work = Changing the Victorian Subject, ed. by Mandy Treagus et al. (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2014), p. 155 | url = https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/victorian-subject/victorian-subject-ebook.pdf | access-date = 5 August 2015 }}</ref>

Boothby, however, was thwarted in his first bid for recognition as lack of funds forced him to disembark en route in Colombo, Sri Lanka and begin making his way homewards through South East Asia. According to family legend, the dire poverty he faced on this journey led him to accept any kind of work he could get: 'This meant working before the mast, stoking in ocean tramps, attending in a Chinese opium den in Singapore, digging in the Burmah Ruby fields, acting, prize fighting, cow punching...'<ref name="RobinsonFamily">Philip M. Robinson and Leslie A. Spence, ''The Robinson Family of Bolsover and Chesterfield'' (Chesterfield: Robinson & Sons, 1937), p. 103, cited in Paul Depasquale, ''Guy Boothby: His Life and Work'' (Seacombe Gardens, South Australia: Pioneer Books, 1982), p. 17.</ref> This was followed by a brief sojourn on [[Thursday Island]], a Melanesian island in the Torres Strait group recently annexed by the Queensland colony, where he worked as a diver in the lucrative pearl trade; and finally by an arduous journey overland across the Australian continent home to Adelaide. While Depasquale, author of the only Boothby biography, warns that this account of his travels may be somewhat glamorous,<ref name="Depasquale">Paul Depasquale, ''Guy Boothby: His Life and Work'' (Seacombe Gardens, South Australia: Pioneer Books, 1982), p. 17.</ref>  Boothby certainly travelled extensively in South East Asia, Melanesia and Australia at this period, collecting a stock of colonial anecdotes and experiences that were to influence much of his later writing.

Approximately two years later, Boothby finally reached London and succeeded in having an account of his peregrinations, ''On the Wallaby, or Through the East and Across Australia'', published in 1894. The travelogue met with reasonable success, which was matched later that year by Boothby's first novel, ''In Strange Company''. A novel of adventure set variously in England, Australia, the South Seas and South America, ''In Strange Company'' established a pattern that was to characterise the succeeding Boothby oeuvre – the use of exotic, international and particularly Australasian locales that frequently function as an end in themselves superfluous to the requirements of plot.<ref name="VictorianSubject2">{{cite web | last = Bulfin | first = Ailise | title = Guy Boothby's "Bid for Fortune": Constructing an Anglo-Australian colonial identity for the fin-de-siècle London literary marketplace | work = Changing the Victorian Subject, ed. by Mandy Treagus et al. (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2014), p. 156 | url = https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/victorian-subject/victorian-subject-ebook.pdf | accessdate = 5 August 2015 }}</ref> By October 1895, Boothby had completed three further novels, including ''A Bid for Fortune'', the first Dr Nikola novel which catapulted Boothby to wide acclaim. Of the two other novels Boothby wrote in 1895 ''A Lost Endeavour'' was set on Thursday Island and ''The Marriage of Esther'' ranged across several Torres Strait Islands. Boothby continued to produce fiction at a ferocious rate, producing up to six novels a year across the range of genres prevalent at the ''fin de siècle'', and is credited with producing over 53 novels in total, not to mention dozens of short stories and plays.<ref name="Sutherland">John Sutherland (ed.), intro to Guy Boothby, ''A Bid For Fortune, or Dr Nikola's Vendetta'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. xv</ref>

==Death==
Boothby died at his home, aged 38 years, in [[Boscombe]], near Bournemouth, from complications arising from [[influenza]] on 26 February 1905. His grave is in the town's [[Wimborne Road Cemetery, Bournemouth|Wimborne Road Cemetery]].<ref>Mark Valentine, "Introduction" in Guy Boothby, ''Dr Nikola, Master Criminal''. Herts UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2009, p. xii</ref>

==Writing==
Some of Boothby's earlier works relate to stories of Australian life, but later he turned to [[genre fiction]], including crime fiction, imperial romance, science fiction and Gothic horror. Boothby's oeuvre is pervaded by an array of intriguing and subversive villains whose larger than life characters eclipse the unremarkable English protagonists. They range from the classic supernatural fiends of ''fin-de-siècle gothic'', to deformed freaks (a particular penchant of Boothby's), to sophisticated international master criminals that anticipate the adversaries of [[Ian Fleming]]'s [[James Bond (literary character)|James Bond]] character. In their depiction of the international master criminal and the revenge of the [[undead]] ancient Egyptian, Boothby's novels were influential in establishing two key tropes of the cinematic age, which persist long after the novels themselves have faded into obscurity.<ref>Ailise Bulfin, "Guy Boothby (1867–1905)", ''The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies'', #5 (December 2008); reprinted in ''Lost Souls of Horror and the Gothic'', ed. by Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M. Murphy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016).</ref>

==The Dr Nikola Series==
[[File:A Bid for Fortune frontispiece.jpg|thumb|right|Frontispiece for ''A Bid for Fortune'' showing Doctor Nikola and cat, illustrated by Stanley L. Wood]]
Boothby was once well known for his series of novels about ''[[Dr Antonio Nikola|Doctor Nikola]]'', an occultist anti-hero seeking immortality and world domination. The adventures of Nikola were launched with the first episode of ''[[s:A Bid for Fortune|A Bid for Fortune]]'' which was serialised in ''[[The Windsor Magazine]]'' (a rival to ''[[The Strand Magazine]]'').  Nikola is described as dressing in "faultless evening dress, slender, having dark peculiar eyes and dark hair, and white toad-coloured skin."<ref>''Guy Boothby'', ''Doctor Nikola''. London and Melbourne: Ward Lock. c. 1895, p. 19.</ref> He lives in a bungalow on the Rue de Lafayette in Shanghai. Stanley L. Wood often illustrated the Nikola stories and his portraits depict Dr Nikola in white cravat and fur coat, with his perennial companion, the black cat Apollyon (named after [[Abaddon|a dark angel]]) – huge, baleful, gleaming-eyed – perched on Nikola's shoulder. Nikola – cosmopolitan, cultivated, universally feared – is highly intelligent but unscrupulous.

John Clute writes that "The heart of the series is devoted to the Doctor's convoluted search for a Tibetan process that will resuscitate the dead and ensure immortality in the living, and there are some hints that – unhampered by compunctions, armed with psi powers and blessed with a powerful experimental intellect – he may have reached  his goal."<ref>John Clute,  "Guy (Newell) Boothby" in John Clute and Peter Nicholls 9ed, ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'', London: Orbit, 1993, p. 143</ref>

Dr Nikola starred in a play ''The Adventures of Dr. Nikola'' by [[Ben Landeck]] and [[Oswald Brand]], which ran briefly in London in 1902.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Lachman, Marvin|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/903807427|title=The villainous stage : crime plays on Broadway and in the West End|date=2014|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-9534-4|oclc=903807427}}</ref>

==Other novels==
In ''A Prince of Swindlers'' he created the character of Simon Carne, a gentleman thief, in the [[A. J. Raffles|Raffles]] mould, with an alter ego as the eccentric detective Klimo. Carne first appeared in ''[[Pearson's Magazine]]'' in 1897, predating Raffles by two years.

''Pharos the Egyptian'' (1899) is a thriller with romance and some supernaturalism in which a very sinister old man, Pharos, proves to be Ptahmes, a mummy who has survived through the centuries with full magical powers.

''The Curse of the Snake'' (1902) is referred to by [[Brian Stableford]] as the most interesting of Boothby's novels. However, Stableford states that Boothby "very obviously made up his novel plots as he went along and that therefore this novel "concludes with a woefully inadequate explanation of its marvelously creepy opening sequence."<ref>Brian Stableford. "Guy (Newell) Boothby in John Clute and John Grant (eds). ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' London: Orbit, 1997, p. 127.</ref>

==Ghost stories==
Boothby wrote a number of ghost stories, mainly from his collections ''Uncle Joe's Legacy and Other Stories'' (1902) and ''The Lady on the Island'' (1904). Amongst the better known of these are "The Black Lady of Brin Tor", "A Strange Goldfield", "The Lady on the Island" and "Remorseless Vengeance." These have been reprinted in horror anthologies edited variously by [[Richard Dalby]], [[Hugh Lamb (editor)|Hugh Lamb]], [[Leigh Blackmore]] and [[James Doig (writer)|James Doig]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?20823 |title=Summary Bibliography: Guy Boothby |publisher=[[Internet Speculative Fiction Database|ISFDB]] |access-date=2024-05-22}}</ref>

==Bibliography==
{{Div col}}

===Doctor Nikola===
# ''[[A Bid for Fortune; Or, Doctor Nikola's Vendetta]]'' (1895) (aka ''Enter, Dr Nikola'') (note: included in the Wordsworth Editions omnibus ''Dr Nikola Master Criminal'', 2009)
# ''[[Doctor Nikola (novel)|Doctor Nikola]]'' (1896) aka ''Dr. Nikola Returns'' (note: included in the Wordsworth Editions omnibus ''Dr Nikola Master Criminal'', 2009)
# ''[[The Lust of Hate]]'' (1897) (note: Dr Nikola makes only a peripheral appearance in this novel).
# ''[[Dr Nikola's Experiment]]'' (1899)
# ''[[Farewell, Nikola]]'' (1901)

===Other works===
Other books written by Guy Boothby include:
* ''On the Wallaby: or, Through the East and Across Australia'' (1894)
* ''[[In Strange Company|In Strange Company: a Story of Chili and the Southern Seas]]'' (1894)
* ''A Lost Endeavour'' (1895)
* ''The Marriage of Esther: a Torres Straits Sketch'' (1895)
* ''The Beautiful White Devil'' (1897)
* ''Bushigrams'' (1897)
* ''The Fascination of the King'' (1897)
* ''The Phantom Stockman'' (1897)
* ''Sheila McLeod: a Heroine of the Back Blocks'' (1897)
* ''The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds'' (1897)
* ''Across The World For a Wife'' (1898)
* ''Billy Binks, Hero: and Other Stories'' (1898)
* ''Love Made Manifest'' (1899)
* ''Pharos, The Egyptian'' (1899)
* ''The Red Rat's Daughter'' (1899)
* ''A Sailor's Bride'' (1899)
* ''[[A Cabinet Secret]]'' (1900)
* ''"Long Live the King!"'' (1900)
* ''A Maker of Nations'' (1900)
* ''A Prince of Swindlers'' (1900) (AKA ''The Viceroy's Protegé'')
* ''[[The Woman of Death]]'' (1900)
* ''The Boundary Rider: a Play in One Act'' (1901)
* ''The Jonquil'' (1901)
* ''A Millionaire's Love Story'' (1901)
* ''My Indian Queen: Being a Record of Sir Charles Verrinder, Baronet, in the East Indies'' (1901)
* ''The Mystery of the Clasped Hands'' (1901)
* ''The Rickshaw: a Farce in Two Acts'' (1901)
* ''My Strangest Case'' (1901)
* ''[[The Childerbridge Mystery]]'' (1902)
* ''The Curse of the Snake'' (1902)
* ''The Kidnapped President'' (1902)
* ''Uncle Joe's Legacy: and Other Stories'' (1902)
* ''Connie Burt'' (1903)
* ''The Countess Londa'' (1903)
* ''The League of Twelve'' (1903)
* ''A Queer Affair'' (1903)
* ''A Two-fold Inheritance'' (1903)
* ''A Bid for Freedom'' (1904)
* ''A Bride from the Sea'' (1904)
* ''A Consummate Scoundrel'' (1904)
* ''A Desperate Conspiracy'' (1904)
* ''The Lady of the Island'' (1904) ("A Professor of Egyptology", "The Black Lady of Brin Tor", "A Strange Goldfield")
* ''An Ocean Secret'' (1904)
* ''A Brighton Tragedy'' (1905)
* ''A Crime of the Under-seas'' (1905)
* ''For Love of Her'' (1905)
* ''In Spite of the Czar'' (1905)
* ''A Lost Endeavor'' (1905)
* ''The Race of Life'' (1906)
* ''A Royal Affair: and Other Stories'' (1906)
* ''A Stolen Peer'' (1906)
* ''The Man of the Crag'' (1907)
* ''In the Power of the Sultan'' (1908)
{{div col end}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}
*{{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Guy|Last=Boothby|shortlink=0-dict-biogBe-Bo.html#boothby1}}

==External links==
{{commons category}}
{{wikisource|works=or}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/guy-boothby}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=3587| name=Guy Boothby}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Guy Newell Boothby}}
* {{Librivox author |id=2512}}
* [http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#boothby ebooks of works by Guy Boothby] at [http://gutenberg.net.au Project Gutenberg Australia]
* [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Guy_Boothby.htm Bibliography]
* [http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/2765/12/merged.pdf Emilio Zampieri: ''Guy Boothby: The "Dr. Nikola" Novels''. (Dissertation, Universita degli studi di Padova, online)]
* William Patrick Maynard, "[https://www.blackgate.com/?s=nikola+pharos Dr. Nikola and Pharos the Egyptian]"
* {{LCAuth|n50044545|Guy Boothby|35|ue}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boothby, Guy}}
[[Category:1867 births]]
[[Category:1905 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:Australian male novelists]]
[[Category:Australian people of English descent]]
[[Category:Writers from Adelaide]]
[[Category:People educated at Lord Weymouth's Grammar School]]
[[Category:19th-century Australian male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian male writers]]
[[Category:Burials at the Wimborne Road Cemetery, Bournemouth]]
[[Category:Colony of South Australia people]]