Hemyng, Bracebridge
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1841-1901) UK barrister and author, born Heming, best known in the USA for the Jack Harkaway boys' stories from 1871, plus many other Dime Novels, not all securely attributed to him. His sf novel, The Commune in London, or Thirty Years Hence: A Chapter of Anticipated History (1871 chap), is an anti-Communard version of the 1871 uprising in Paris as translated into a UK already deeply anxious about threatened upheavals and Invasions (see Battle of Dorking). The fit between the Jules Verne character and the Captain Nemo, in The Scapegrace at Sea; Or, the Adventures of Dick Lightheart: His Adventures on the Sea, Under the Sea, On the Earth, and in the Centre of the Earth (1873 Young Men of Great Britain as "Dick Lightheart; Or, the Scapegrace at Sea"; 1874), is so tight that Jess Nevins, describing the tale in his The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana (2005), calls it plagiarism. The Spirit World (coll circa 1884) contains mostly supernatural tales. [JC]
Samuel Bracebridge Hemyng
born Westminster, London: 5 March 1841
died London: 18 September 1901
works
- The Commune in London, or Thirty Years Hence: A Chapter of Anticipated History (London: C H Clarke, 1871) [chap: pb/]
- The Scapegrace at Sea; Or, the Adventures of Dick Lightheart: His Adventures on the Sea, Under the Sea, On the Earth, and in the Centre of the Earth (London: Edwin J Brett, 1874) [pb/]
- The Spirit World (London: John and Robert Maxwell, 1884) [coll: the date is approximate according to George Locke: pb/]
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