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Edward Phillips Oppenheim (22 October 1866 – 3 February 1946) was an English novelist, a prolific writer of best-selling genre fiction, featuring glamorous characters, international intrigue and fast action. Notably easy to read, they were viewed as popular entertainments. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1927.

E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edward Phillips Oppenheim
BornEdward Phillips Oppenheim
(1866-10-22)22 October 1866
Tottenham, London, England
Died3 February 1946(1946-02-03) (aged 79)
St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK
Pen nameAnthony Partridge (5 novels)
OccupationNovelist
Period1887–1943
GenreThriller romances

Biography


Edward Phillips Oppenheim was born 22 October 1866 in Tottenham, London,[1] the son of Henrietta Susannah Temperley Budd and Edward John Oppenheim, a leather merchant.[2][lower-alpha 1] After attending Wyggeston Grammar School until the sixth form in 1883, his family's finances forced him to withdraw[5][4] and he worked in his father's business for almost twenty years. His father subsidized the publication of his first novel, which proved just successful enough to break even.[5] He published five of his novels between 1908 and 1912 under the pseudonym "Anthony Partridge".[6]

Around 1900, Julien Stevens Ulman (1865–1920), a wealthy New York leather merchant who enjoyed Oppenheim's books, bought the leather works and made him a salaried director to support his writing career.[4][lower-alpha 2]

He quickly found a successful formula and established his reputation. In 1913, John Buchan, launching his career as a suspense novelist, called Oppenheim "my master in fiction" and "the greatest Jewish writer since Isaiah".[8][lower-alpha 3] As early as that year, his publishers were bringing out new editions of some of his earlier works to meet, in the words of one trade publication, "the insatiable demand of the public for more stories by him". It added: "Readers of the author's recent books will find these first stories of life sketches full of interest, their very crudeness being positively amusing in light of his present finished craftsmanship."[10][lower-alpha 4]

Oppenheim with his wife and daughter
Oppenheim with his wife and daughter

In 1892 Oppenheim married an American, Elise Clara Hopkins of Easthampton, Massachusetts.[11] They lived in Evington, Leicestershire[12] in what is now The Cedars pub until the First World War and had one daughter.[lower-alpha 5] During that war he worked for the Ministry of Information.[4]

He described his method in 1922: "I create one more or less interesting personality, try to think of some dramatic situation in which he or she might be placed, and use that as the opening of a nebulous chain of events." He never used an outline: "My characters would resent it."[15] When he needed villains for his diplomatic and political intrigues he drew on Prussian militarists and anarchists, enough for one reviewer to lament "the baldness of his propaganda".[16] For example, in A People's Man (1915), a socialist discovers that his movement is secretly run by German spies.[17]

A 1927 review in The New York Times said he "numbers his admirers in the hundreds of thousands and has one or more of his books on a prominent shelf in almost every home one enters".[16] He appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 12 September of that same year.[18]

Reviews for his work treated them as entertainments with only a slight relationship to the mystery genre. In 1933, a review of Crooks in the Sunshine explained that "Mr. Oppenheim's crooks are so polished that they have no difficulty in moving in the very best society.... There is very little mystery in this book, but there is dress-suit crime galore."[19] In 1936, a review of A Magnificent Hoax, his one hundredth novel,[lower-alpha 6] said: "The hoax is on the reader, who is led, through nearly 300 pages, only to find that nothing very terrible has happened. The explanation takes a bit of believing, but since it extricates several very nice people from what looks like a nasty mess, one is willing to let that pass."[20] The Shy Plutocrat, published early in World War II, was "a good tale to take your mind off your worries".[21] Readers came to expect familiar themes, "the peculiar Oppenheim blend of dispatch-box atmosphere, femmes fatales, double traitors, and a tight plot".[22] In mid-career, The Great Impersonation (1920) was called "his best work".[16][23]

Along with dozens of novel and short story collections, he produced an autobiography, The Pool of Memory, in 1942.[5]

Oppenheim's literary success enabled him to buy a villa on the French riviera and a yacht, then a house in Guernsey,[lower-alpha 7] though he lost access to this during the Second World War. He regained the house, Le Vauquiedor Manor in St. Martins, after the war and died there on 3 February 1946.[11] His wife died there on 25 November.[25]

An assessment that appeared in The New York Times upon his death said: "As he recalls in his pleasant and modest autobiography, all his books were easy to write. They were equally easy to read, especially on a summer vacation, when escapist literature is most welcome."[26] He composed by dictating to a secretary and once produced seven works in a single year. His social set included the characters that populated his novels, where he created "a glamorous world of international intrigue, romance and plushy society galloping along in swift action and suspense".[26] One academic study calls him "a talented entertainer".[17]


Writings



Novels


Oppenheim produced more than 100 novels between 1887 and 1943. They include:


Short story collections


Most of Oppenheim's 38 collections of short stories, 27 of which have been published in the United States, are series with sustained interest in which one group of characters appears throughout.


Film adaptations



Notes


  1. The Oppenheim family immigrated to England four generations earlier. He reported overhearing a Frenchman referring to him as a "naturalized Hun" and commented: "'A naturalized Hun' with three generations of English-born ancestors behind him!"[3] An ancestor, Ludwig von Oppenheim, was expelled from Germany in the 18th century.[4]
  2. Ulman went into the leather business in 1890 and in a few years became "head of one of the largest and most successful houses engaged in that trade, having valuable connections with all foreign countries and doing an extensive exporting business".[7]
  3. In his memoirs, Oppenheim mentions that when first married and living in Leicester he "became a sidesman at the Parish Church".[9] In the Anglican Church, a sidesman assists the church warden with greeting parishioners, seating arrangements, and collections.
  4. The reissued works included The World's Greatest Snare (1900) and The Survivor (1901).[10]
  5. Their daughter Geraldine married John Nowell Downes, known as Nowell, and they in turn had at least one son.[13] Geraldine survived her parents.[14]
  6. Miss Brown of X.Y.O. was described as his one hundredth work in 1927.[16]
  7. Oppenheim in his memoirs explains that they chose Guernsey because its climate was better for his health than anyplace in England.[24]

References


  1. England & Wales census, 1871, National Archives ref RG10/1338 folio 72 page 41
  2. "E. Phillips Oppenheim". online-literature.com.
  3. Oppenheim (1941). "5: Fred Thomson ate the Bacon, but Calthrop found the Countess". The Pool of Memory. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  4. "E.P. Oppenheim, 79, Noted Author, Dies". The New York Times. 4 February 1946. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  5. Cournos, John (22 February 1942). "Novelist's Memoirs at Seventy-Five". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 3 April 2020. Includes a photo.
  6. "Oppenheim's Eighty-Third Story Now Ready". The Bookseller and Stationer. 15 February 1923. p. 15. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  7. Weeks, Lyman Horace, ed. (1898). Prominent Families of New York. Historical Company. p. 580. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  8. Buchan, Ursula (2019). Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan. Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  9. Oppenheim (1941). "2: I Begin To Stand Upon my Feet". The Pool of Memory. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  10. "Items of Interest". The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer. 1 July 1913. p. 25. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  11. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 5 February 2011
  12. British History Online R. A. McKinley (editor)(1958) A History of the County of Leicester: volume 4: The City of Leicester
  13. Oppenheim (1941). "24: The Thunderbolt Falls". The Pool of Memory. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  14. "E.P. Oppenheim Left $26,526". The New York Times. 18 March 1950. Retrieved 4 April 2020. This was his estate in England. His Guernsey property was not subject to estate tax.
  15. "Oppenheim Reveals Secret of his Tales". The New York Times. 5 March 1922. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  16. "Mr. Oppenheim Celebrates a Centennial". The New York Times. 14 August 1927. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  17. Harvie, Christopher (2005). The Centre of Things: Political Fiction in Britain from Disraeli to the Present. Routledge. pp. 147–8. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  18. "Edward Phillips Oppenheim". Time. 12 September 1927. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  19. "New Mystery Stories". The New York Times. 14 May 1933. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  20. "New Mystery Stories". The New York Times. 19 July 1936. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  21. "Fiction in Lighter Vein". The New York Times. 3 August 1941. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  22. "Books: Opp". Time. 23 February 1942. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  23. "E. Phillips Oppenheim". The Bookseller and Stationer. 15 March 1923. p. 27. Retrieved 6 April 2020. Eighty-four novels have in no way dimmed the imaginative ability of this English mystery writer whose The Great Impersonation alone would have made for him an international reputation.
  24. Oppenheim (1941). "13: Cricket de Luxe". The Pool of Memory. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
  25. "Mrs. Phillips Oppenheim". The New York Times. 26 November 1946. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  26. "E. Phillips Oppenheim". The New York Times. 4 February 1946. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
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