Sax Rohmer

Writing under the pen name Sax Rohmer, Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward was born in Birmingham on February 15, 1883, and died in London on June 1, 1959. He became an internationally popular British novelist, remembered above all for the long-running Fu Manchu series.

His fiction mixed mystery, horror, melodrama, and a fascination with the occult and distant settings. Britannica notes his early interest in ancient Egypt, the Middle East, and occult subjects, interests that also fed books beyond Fu Manchu, including supernatural and adventure stories.

Today, Rohmer is usually discussed in two ways at once: as a major popular storyteller of the pulp era, and as the creator of a character closely tied to the racial fears and stereotypes of his time. That mixed legacy makes him both influential and controversial, but his impact on 20th-century thriller fiction is still easy to trace.