The Collected Raffles Stories (Oxford Popular Fiction)

This entertaining collection of crime stories presents the adventures of one of fiction's most enduring characters, the hyper-elegant A.J. Raffles, man-about-town, thief, and "finest slow bowler of his generation." With his partner in crime, Bunny Manders, Raffles preys on the rich, the greedy, and the unspeakably vulgar. His talents are exercised not only in London, but as far afield as Italy, Australia, and South Africa at the height of the Boer War. Throughout these exciting yarns the emphasis on panache, with intensifying suggestions of fallibility, goes to the heart of late Victorian attitudes and values.

Clive Bloom is Reader in English and American Studies at Middlesex University. His many books and edited works include Cult Fiction, Dark Nights: The New Comics in Context (with Greg McClure), and a forthcoming work on the British bestseller in the twentieth century.