Horniman, Roy
Entry updated 30 March 2026. Tagged: Author.
Working name of Robert Horniman (1865-1930), prolific UK author, playwright and (after World War One) screenwriter who began to publish work of genre interest with The Sin of Atlantis (1900). The main characters – an uncomfortably married English duke, a young woman to whom he is strangely attracted and two occultists, one scrupulous and benevolent and the other very much less so – all prove to be Reincarnations of a similar quadrangle (king, vestal virgin and royal advisors) in ancient Atlantis, whose fiery Disaster and sinking are experienced in a climactic vision. Following this awful warning, the present-day love story ends with Victorian propriety duly if a little drearily preserved. The Chinese eponym of The Living Buddha (1903), who at one point performs a seemingly miraculous healing (though the possibility of Hypnosis is also suggested), is sympathetic to Western Christian visitors (see Religion) while bureaucratic Mandarins and some of his own followers are not; in the end he dies edifyingly. In the short story "No Ball" (May 1906 The Idler), a disagreement in a Near Future cricket match (see Games and Sports) between the UK and the USA escalates into Future War. [DRL]
Robert Horniman
born Southsea, Hampshire: 31 July 1868
died London: 11 October 1930
works (highly selected)
- The Sin of Atlantis (London: John Macqueen, 1900) [hb/]
- The Living Buddha (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1903) [hb/]
links
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