بوابة الثانوية العامة المصرية - إقرأ عن مؤلف رواية سجين زندا وسبب كتابته لهذه الرواية

About the author

Anthony Hope Hawkins was born on 9 February 1863 in London, England. He was educated at Marlborough Collage and at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a model student and classic all-rounder, emerging from Oxford with first-class degrees in the classics, philosophy and ancient history. In 1887 he was called to the Bar, where he worked as a junior barrister for H. H. Asquith, the Liberal politician and future Prime Minister

Hope maintained a great interest in politics throughout his life. In 1892 he stood for Parliament as a Liberal candidate in South Bucks, but was not elected. He enjoyed the company of politicians, and joined a political club, whose members included Winston Churchill and Lloyd George

Some of his contemporaries thought Hope could have been Lord Chancellor if The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) had not got in the way

Hawkins lived with his widowed father while pursuing his career in law and writing. Hope published around thirty fictional works in his lifetime, but it was The Prisoner of Zenda that made him famous, enabling him to give up law, and become a full-time writer and literary man. Hope was an efficient and quick writer. The first draft of The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898) were completed in just a month

In 1903 Hope was returning from a lecture tour in the States, when he met 18-year-old American, Elizabeth Somerville. They fell in love and were married in the summer of that year. They had two sons and a daughter and lived in rural Surrey. Hope was knighted in 1919 for his work during the First World War, when he worked for the Ministry of Information and wrote pamphlets to offset German propaganda. He died of throat cancer in 1933