Rafael Sabatini (Estate)

Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950) was one of the foremost writers of historical and adventure fiction of his time.  Born in 1875 in Jesi, Italy, the son of an Italian father and Scottish mother, he came to work in Liverpool at the age of 17 and stayed in England until his death in 1950.  The master of the swashbuckling tale, he achieved enormous success after the First World War with his historical novels SCARAMOUCHE (1921) and CAPTAIN BLOOD (1922).  His works are still famous today through the screen versions of these books and also that of the novel THE SEA HAWK (1915), which was made into a celebrated film starring Errol Flynn. He also wrote historical biographies and was a prolific writer of short stories ranging in historical time from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and featuring a splendid array of rogues, vagabonds, shyster lawyers, cutpurses, quacks and conmen.  Full of pace, incident, and plot, the stories often contain a strong element of crime, mystery and suspense. Many of these stories can be found in a collection entitled THE FORTUNES OF CASANOVA AND OTHER STORIES (1994).  Sabatini’s works had a great influence on later writers of popular historical fiction.