Between Adelaide and England
Born in Adelaide in 1867, Boothby spent part of his childhood at school in England. Back in South Australia as a teenager, he became private secretary to the mayor of Adelaide and wrote for the stage. When his theatrical ventures fell short of his hopes, he travelled through parts of Asia and northern Australia. On the Wallaby turned that journey into a published account in 1894.
He settled in England and soon found an audience for A Bid for Fortune, the first of the Dr Nikola novels. The books moved quickly between ports, drawing rooms and places beyond the knowledge of their English protagonists. By his death at Boscombe in 1905 he had produced several novels a year at the height of his career.
An artist receives a visitor
Pharos the Egyptian gives the modern side of its encounter with antiquity to an artist, Cyril Forrester. A letter and a delivered packet frame his account as testimony passed from one person to another. Its Egyptian mysteries belong to the late Victorian adventure story, including its fears about what imperial collecting has brought home. John H. Bacon illustrates the 1899 Ward, Lock edition.
