 e. w. hornung wrote a series of twenty-six short stories and one novel about the adventures of arthur j. raffles, cricketeer and gentleman thief, and his chronicler, harry "bunny" manders, in london, between 1898 and 1909. the first story, "the ides of march", appeared in the june 1898 edition of cassell's magazine. the early adventures were published in the amateur cracksman and continued with the black mask after raffles's and bunny's exposure through to raffles's death. the last collection, a thief in the night, as well as the novel, mr. justice raffles, tell of adventures previously withheld. hornung dedicated the first collection of stories, the amateur cracksman, to his brother-in-law, arthur conan doyle, intending raffles as a "form of flattery." in contrast to conan doyle's holmes and watson, raffles and bunny are "something dark, morally uncertain, yet convincingly, reassuringly english." {{quote|text=i think i may claim that his famous character raffles was a kind of inversion of sherlock holmes, bunny playing watson. he admits as much in his kindly dedication. i think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though i confess i think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. i told him so before he put pen to paper, and t
Characters_in_British_novels_of_the_19th_century Characters_in_British_novels_of_the_20th_century Fictional_characters_introduced_in_1899 Fictional_gentleman_thieves Literary_characters Series_of_books Wold_Newton_family_(literature)