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00:00:00 Presentation
00:01:20 Comedy at Fountain Cottage
01:02:47 Credits, thanks and additional listening
If you'd like to hear more stories featuring Max Carrados, I have a playlist in development, available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?listPLi95qAoufCZLjwoLUZBvPAFemYFKiqB7z
Or for a selection of other Victorian and Edwardian detective novels, take a look at the /"Rivals of Sherlock Holmes/" playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?listPLi95qAoufCZL5tiXECltwXUI2QDDFrDHD
About the author: Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was born Ernest Bramah Smith, probably in or around Manchester, where he attended grammar school. An intensely private man, very little is known about his personal life. His early career included a stint as an assistant to Jerome K. Jerome; his first success as a writer came as a contributor of humorous sketches somewhat in the manner of Jerome, to newspapers and periodicals, and he later became editor of one of Jerome's magazines. As an author, he is best remembered for creating two characters: Kai Lung, a Chinese storyteller who appeared in a number of humorous stories beginning in 1900; and Max Carrados, the blind detective, created in 1913. He also wrote science fiction, and his 1907 novel "What Might Have Been" (also known as "The Secret of the League") is a dystopian story recognized by George Orwell. as a major influence on his own "1984". Orwell was also a great admirer of the stories of Max Carrados, bracketing them with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke as "the only detective novels since Poe worth rereading/". The character of Carrados appeared in more than 25 short stories and novels between 1913 and 1934, and by the 1920s he was more popular than Sherlock Holmes (whose later cases appeared alongside Carrados in The Strand Magazine). His blindness poses no obstacle to his detective skills; indeed, his other senses are heightened and he regularly outwits criminals and his fellow detectives.
Ernest Bramah Smith died in June 1942, aged 74, in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. He is survived by his wife Lucy Smith.
"The Comedy at Fountain Cottage" first appeared in "The News of the World" in November 1913. It was reprinted the following year as part of the first collection of Carrados stories to appear in book form, simply entitled “Max Carrados (Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1914).
Small Size Audio Recording 2024
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