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Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman

(A.J. Raffles, The Gentleman Thief #1)

E.W. Hornung,

Richard Lancelyn Green (Editor)

3.59 · Rating details · 2,108 ratings · 237 reviews

Gentleman thief Raffles is daring, debonair, devilishly handsome-and a first-rate cricketer. In these eight stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny.

Encouraged ...more

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published August 26th 2003 by Penguin Classics (first published 1898)

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Start your review of Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (A.J. Raffles, The Gentleman Thief #1)

Oct 28, 2012 Maureen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

the idea of raffles, the gentleman thief, obverse of the legendary sherlock holmes, gentleman detective (the creation of hornung's esteemed brother-in-law arthur conan doyle), thrills me. and i can't say i don't normally adore the idea of working outside the law to balance the scales of justice -- i watch timothy hutton's modern-day robin hood crew on leverage as often as possible. there is no doubt that raffles is in some ways the progenitor of this type of character but in reading the book i r the idea of raffles, the gentleman thief, obverse of the legendary sherlock holmes, gentleman detective (the creation of hornung's esteemed brother-in-law arthur conan doyle), thrills me. and i can't say i don't normally adore the idea of working outside the law to balance the scales of justice -- i watch timothy hutton's modern-day robin hood crew on leverage as often as possible. there is no doubt that raffles is in some ways the progenitor of this type of character but in reading the book i realized the only redress was being made to "the cracksman"'s pocket. before reading this collection of stories, i had visions of hutton's character nate ford, and the great french character arsène lupin or baroness orczy's scarlett pimpernel but instead found raffles anticipating leopold and loeb:

"A matter of opinion, my dear Bunny; I don't mean it for rot. I've told you before that the biggest man alive is the man who's committed a murder, and not yet been found out; at least he ought to be, but he so very seldom has the soul to appreciate himself. Just think of it! Think of coming here and talking to the men, very likely about the murder itself; and knowing you've done it; and wondering how they'd look if they knew! Oh, it would be great, simply great!" - from "Wilful Murder"

much has been made of the fact that raffles has a code -- he does not murder; he only steals when he has need. as it turns out raffles doesn't actually subscribe to the code he lays out -- he seems to make excuses for lapses of conduct often, perhaps revealing how little it means -- see the story quoted above for a revision of his "no murder" rule, or "A Costume Piece" for how he decides to go ahead with a robbery which won't alleviate his financial constraints but simply for the challenge. it would seem that the victorians would identify with the idea that crime was understandable if it prevented one from quitting their "rightful" sphere, and for those who stood a high moral ground hornung introduced the misgivings of bunny (his sidekick and former fag at public school) as a balance to raffles' complete lack of ethics.

as members of the unmonied upper class, both raffles and bunny are part of Society and are terrified to lose their standing (though not so much so that they quit the gambling and the tailors that have brought them low) in the class system they so adore. but when i shake it out, all i can see is that raffles is a dated sociopath cricket player, who will not quit his sphere despite his inability to afford it and is a relic of the deep divide in classes as much as cricket and the public school system. i was woefully misapprehended regarding the character of raffles -- i expected that this much ballyhooed code was real, that raffles' choices might result from some reflection, be difficult to arrive at, or borne of something i could more easily identify with, instead i found him to be a character completely ingrained in the class system: entitled, selfish, and grasping. i don't say that this makes raffles less of an interesting character but he's no raskolnikov either. i don't feel any sense of conflict or even engagement when he embarks on a plan, or a concern for his well-being because his motivations don't mean a thing to me -- or to him, either, it seems. his friend bunny is the loyal dimwit who assists him in schemes which brings me to what i liked least about the raffles stories: the mode in which the action is delivered.

in the majority of these stories raffles conceives of a plan of action and does not share its details with bunny. we are then left to hear him relate to bunny the plan after the fact, an issue that bunny himself points out:

"Then you should have let me know when you did decide. You lay your plans, and never say a word, and expect me to tumble to them by light of nature. How was I to know you had anything on?"

i really didn't like this device at all and the revelation of the plan was never so exciting or elaborate in the recitation that i gave up my resentment. i found the structure of the stories boring -- a lot of exposition, and when they are actually engaged in action it's often of a boring sort: for example, in one tale, bunny is awakened to sounds of a struggle and tasked with holding a suspect while the scotland yard detective who has nabbed the competitor thief goes after the others. bunny stands there holding the suspect. there's a lot of talk. he holds him some more. hooey! hold me back from this gripping story!

i can say i found his prose very clean, and the dialogue charming -- just overused in exposition. i was going to give the book only two stars but seeing as it gave me lots to think about in terms of what not to do with structure and characterization, and really is the precursor to so many other gentleman thieves that i am in debt to hornung for his contribution to the archetype, and so the collection gets three stars on those merits though i don't know how long that shall stick.

N.B. before anybody takes my analysis of raffles and his lack of morals as evidence that i just don't like books with amoral characters, i'll say when reading this i thought of how much more i loved bertie woosters attempts at stealing a cow creamer, o. henry's pastiche of shamrock jolnes, not to mention his tales of burglars and thieves, and how engaged i was in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer despite the repugnance of the main character.

bonus review material for the literary detectives out there: the george orwell essay that is quoted liberally whenever raffles is discussed is actually a comparative book review he wrote in 1944. it is available online here: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/chas...
i myself appreciated the opportunity to read orwell's commentary on raffles in context -- most of the time only a line or two is referenced, and usually makes it seem like orwell thought hornung a genius. on my own reading, i see that orwell did find interest in raffles relationship to english society especially in his relationship to cricket, and that he liked the book more than the one he was comparing it to. it seems to me that he thought the book good for its small lights, and was not quite as overpowered by it as critical essays and reviews who cite him would have one believe. :)

...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Jacob rated it really liked it

Shelves: i-own, 2011-2015, short-fiction, sherlock-holmes-and-friends

January 2011

Good news, Americans! You don't have to know anything about cricket to read and enjoy this!

Meet A. J. Raffles: gentleman, independent bachelor, London man-about-town, champion cricketeer--er, cricketman--I mean, player-of-cricket--and...thief? Surely not! Surely so: how else could this gentleman of leisure afford to play poor man's baseball--I mean, cricket, sorry--whenever he likes? One must make money somehow, God wot, and Raffles' way is only slightly more dishonest than others. I ...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Wealhtheow rated it liked it

Shelves: historical

Raffles and Bunny are two young gentlemen with large debts and no desire to work for a living. They turn to crime, specifically burglary, to continue to live their lives of idle luxury. The stories are clearly inspired by and partially parodies of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Raffles is cold, logical, and nigh-superhuman. Bunny is dim enough that the reader gets the pleasure of knowing more than he does and sniggering at all that he misses. It's got some casual racism typical of its time, and no ...more

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Sep 06, 2015 Nancy rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks-2015, 2015-read, mystery

An utterly delightful romp; more fun than Holmes.

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Jun 15, 2008 Scott rated it liked it

Shelves: victorian, crime, 1890s, london

The embodiment of fin de siècle decadence, dashing A. J. Raffles artfully commits crime for crime’s sake. Bored with life as a master cricketer, Raffles turns to a life of crime to stifle his ennui – and pad his purse. His conscience-bitten sidekick, Bunny, accompanies him as he burgles Victorian London’s rogues, ruthless, and “rich and undeserving.” In the eight short stories that make up Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1899), E. W. Hornung creates an anti-Sherlock Holmes – a character who find ...more

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Jul 30, 2020 Kaethe Douglas is currently reading it · review of another edition

Shelves: tbr-shelf

The format is borrowed from Doyle, but Raffles is so very Wilde, and I have no problem seeing the story's Bunny as Bosie. I haven't encountered a love so pure since Point Break. Reading these stories is going to be an unsullied delight. ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Tony rated it it was ok

Well enough written but absolutely mind-numbing. Raffles is a dick and Bunny is caught in his headlights.

Written as an anti-hero with his brother-in-law's real hero in sight (Holmes), I can only suggest he failed miserably to redress the balance. ...more

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Nov 19, 2008 Daniel rated it liked it

Recommended to Daniel by: Rose

Shelves: books-deserving-rediscovery, 2008

It would be impossible to read "The Amateur Cracksman" -- the first of E.W. Hornung's books featuring gentleman thief A.J. Raffles and his sidekick and chronicler Bunny -- without comparing it to the Sherlock Holmes books. Hornung, after all, was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, and he created Raffles as something of a reversal of Holmes -- a character as cunning as the famous detective, and as much a master of disguise, but prone to using his ingenuity to commit crimes rather than solve the ...more

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Dec 10, 2014 Laura rated it liked it

Shelves: british-literature, fiction-19th-century, e-books, victorians, gutenberg, audio-books, short-stories, adventure, read-2018, vintage-crime

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

From BBC Radio 4Extra:
Bunny is surprised and pleased to be invited by Raffles to share the latter's self-imposed 'rest cure' in a large house in Kensington.

But Raffles, needless to say, has his own somewhat nefarious reasons for wanting to take a holiday...

Starring Jeremy Clyde as AJ Raffles, Michael Cochrane as Bunny Manders, Christopher Benjamin as Colonel Crutchley, Laurence Payne as the Porter and Norman Bird as the Cabby.

EW Hornung's Raffles stor ...more

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Oct 24, 2016 Stephen Robert Collins rated it it was amazing

Sherlock Holmes was written by Conan Doyle but his brother in law got sick of him & his ego going and on about Holmes so he decided to put pen to paper but instead of dective he created a Robin Hood style anti hero Raffles

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Jan 25, 2018 kiwi rated it liked it

bunny is definitely in love with raffles.

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Oct 23, 2017 Margaret added it

Did not finish.

A. J. Raffles must be just about THE most annoying character ever created. Narcisistic, and borderline psychopathic. And Bunny is a snivelling little wimp.

Managed two and a half stories before throwing in the towel.

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Jul 26, 2020 Hillary rated it really liked it

This one was interesting. Raffles struck me as a weird love child of Moriarty and Robin Hood, and his friend Bunny, who narrates, is wildly head over heels for him. Wildly. Passionately. His description of Raffles barely a few pages in is practically swooning over him, and he gets hilariously jealous when Raffles spends more time with a girl than he does with Bunny. I'm still not really on board with the thievery (honestly, their spending and/or gambling habits must be completely absurd to get t ...more

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Oct 29, 2017 Patrick Murtha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A.J. Raffles periodically re-surfaces as a classic character of popular fiction, and just as quickly drops out of sight again, exactly as E.W. Hornung frequently describes him doing in the 26 short stories and single novel that he devoted to Raffles - about half the output that Arthur Conan Doyle produced about Sherlock Holmes. Hornung, famously, was married to Conan Doyle's sister, and patterned his stories of the gentleman thief and champion cricketer Raffles, and his sidekick Bunny Mander, af A.J. Raffles periodically re-surfaces as a classic character of popular fiction, and just as quickly drops out of sight again, exactly as E.W. Hornung frequently describes him doing in the 26 short stories and single novel that he devoted to Raffles - about half the output that Arthur Conan Doyle produced about Sherlock Holmes. Hornung, famously, was married to Conan Doyle's sister, and patterned his stories of the gentleman thief and champion cricketer Raffles, and his sidekick Bunny Mander, after the Holmesian example, while inverting the moral system. Conan Doyle was flattered and praised the stories, but was also troubled by them: "You must not make the criminal a hero."

Of course, it's exactly this inversion that has always provided Raffles' fascination. Should we root for him or not? Hornung comes up with ways for us to do so rather painlessly, but still, it's a dicey business. Each new Raffles story you read raises the issue all over again, and that, obviously, is an awfully good fictional hook.

The Raffles - Bunny relationship is also, in a different sense, "inverted" - a whole lot gayer than the Holmes - Watson partnership. Hornung was friendly with Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and is said to have based his duo partly on them. In the first Raffles story, "The Ides of March," a distinctly down-on-his-luck Bunny Mander is actually contemplating suicide over some gambling debts, but his old schoolmate Raffles persuades him that criminality is sometimes a better course of action than giving into depression. To become Raffles' partner-in-crime for the rest of the series, Bunny has to get off on shared improper behavior, and boy does he:

I'll do it again...I will...I'll lend you a hand as often as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in it once. I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing matters another rap! When you want me I'm your man.

If no sexual interpretation occurs to you while you are reading that, you have a cleaner mind than mine.

The first 16 Raffles stories were collected in two volumes of eight stories apiece, The Amateur Cracksman (1899) and The Black Mask (1901). Wordsworth Classics reprinted all these in one volume, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman, in 1994, and it was in this form that I read and was delighted by them.

These first two volumes of Raffles stories are decidedly different, because at the end of the first, Raffles disappears and Bunny is packed off to prison. Their adventures after their reunion in the second collection cannot have the same carefree tone as before, and indeed do not, a fact that some decried as a diminution of the original impulse, but which I simply read as fictional development. Things have to happen in stories, as in life, and in good fictional series, the author follows through on the consequences of them happening.

Raffles comes to a rather improbable glorious end fighting in the Boer War in the last of these 16 stories, and when Hornung decided to revive the character with 10 more stories in A Thief in the Night in 1905, and a single novel Mr. Justice Raffles in 1909, he didn't "bring him back to life" a la Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Empty House," but set the stories in a period before Raffles' demise a la The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Raffles has been incarnated by at least 13 actors on screen and television, including John Barrymore, Ronald Colman, and David Niven. Anyone who can play elegant-but-larcenous has been eligible. Cary Grant would have worked. ...more

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Jun 19, 2010 Yngvild rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adventure

Raffles is such an appealing character that it is a wonder that no other writer has quite captured his spirit. He is one of a class of well-educated young nineteenth-century swells, fit for earning no living, having apparently inherited no fortune, yet expected to live like gentlemen of means.

In an earlier age, younger sons or the sons of impecunious gentlemen would have ridden off to the Crusades, or crept into poor livings as clergymen. By the Victorian age, growing numbers of such boys had t ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 DeAnna Knippling rated it really liked it

A gentleman thief who is no gentleman!

I'd read a couple of other classic gentleman-thief books (Lupin, Phantomas), so I was expecting something similar. Nope. These are the stories of how two men-about-town slide down the slippery slope of crime, with no pretense of solving crimes or stealing from the rich to give to the poor. There's acid to the stories--as if we were reading the modern stories of how a famous sports figure and a famous journalist, presumed to be wealthy on the basis of their w ...more

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Feb 23, 2020 Dannica Zulestin rated it liked it

Shelves: classics

I love Raffles and Bunny playing the anti-Holmes duo, and the weird adventures they get up to. I'd love it more, though, if they did more actual burglary and less "we almost did a burglary but for one reason or another we did not actually commit the burglary." Feels like Hornung is hedging bc of Victorian morality and damn it, I just want some thieves doing thief stuff! Give me the Lupin vibes! ...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Michael P. rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Where to start? These stores are a sort of reverse Sherlock Holmes. The protagonist, a thief, takes the man who chronicles his adventures with him on his capers, and these stories are set in roughly the same time period and in mostly similar places. Whereas, however, Doyle wrote with wonderful flare and style, E. W. Hornung does not. The lines are flat and unengaging. Raffles is no Holmes. Though both share a penchant for keeping their friend in the dark in order to surprise the reader, his inte ...more

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May 22, 2020 Tony Calder rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, crime

An excellent example of late-Victorian / early-Edwardian storytelling. While Raffles as a character is certainly well known, E.W. Hornung is certainly not as well known as his brother-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle - but he should be, as Raffles is every bit as memorable a character as Sherlock Holmes.

Both the Raffles stories and the Holmes stories have crime as their central theme, although they come at it from different sides. This is not to say that they are mirror images of each other - Raffles i ...more

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Feb 13, 2017 Leothefox rated it liked it · review of another edition

Raffles and Bunny are buddies! They are buddies with a complex setup though, since A.J. Raffles lead his old school chum Bunny (our narrator) into a life of “amateur” crime which forever complicates their lives. If nothing else, this is an interesting window into late 19th century England, where high class men gambled away everything they had and would rather steal than resort to work.

Like many have pointed out, this is very like Holmes and Watson's dynamic, only applied to thieves rather than ...more

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Oct 20, 2020 Sobriquet rated it liked it

Shelves: classic-shelf, classic, vic-novels-read

These stories were darker than I was expecting. I would count this a novel rather than a collection of short stories, as although each chapter is episodic and could theoretically be read as an individual short story, they do follow a longer narrative and are best read in order. The set up is of gentleman thieves, Raffles and Bunny, and their house breaking activities. At the beginning the stories had a softer more P.G. Wodehouse feel to them, but the risks and consequences of their exploits are ...more

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Jan 18, 2020 Bookshire Cat rated it liked it

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-english

As the first Sherlockian fanfiction, it is a delight - and written by no one else than Doyle's brother-in-law. I daresay he wrote it as explicit as he could in the 19th century without being accused of gross indecency.

But as for its literary qualities, it has next to none and the stories become boring rather quickly. Raffles is not really clever, his cunning comes just from the fact that he never tells his sidekick anything. And Bunny is so smitten by his good looks and charisma that he lets hi ...more

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Dec 16, 2020 Nicholas Martens rated it really liked it

I'm on a roll with gentleman thieves, following up Guy Boothby's Prince of Swindlers with the first Raffles stories. On the one hand, Raffles doesn't operate on a scale as grand as Simon Carne, but the collection doesn't burn itself out as quickly, either. It's a solid set of stories, no one of them clearing the high bar set by Boothby's "Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds," but it was enjoyable to the end, without repeating itself or resorting to too-implausible scenarios. ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Kali Samutratanakul rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, short-stories

"this conversation is so gay i had to take off my glasses" -me, reading the gift of the emperor

i'll share with you what my dear friend ernest told me that convinced me to read this: if you liked the gay crime-solving boyfriends, sherlock holmes and john watson, i'd love to suggest to you, two gay crime-committing boyfriends, aj raffles and bunny manders. huge fun to read.

i highly recommend the annotated version, available for free here (the stories are in public domain): http://www.rafflesredux. ...more

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Jun 11, 2017 Jeff Johnston rated it liked it

I certainly liked the idea portrayed by Horning (Raffles 'The Gentleman Thief'), however for me there was never enough content, intrigue or character building of the protagonists within each internal affair.

This was the first story from an Omnibus 'The Collected Raffles'. Hopefully, the next couple stories will deliver more. ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Andy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

1899. That's the only excuse. There are hints of a really good writer, but Rsffles the gentleman their comes across as a harmless sociopath, and the narrator is clearly in an abusive relationship with him. ...more

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Aug 07, 2020 Hannah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, x

SO! I have now read all of the books in this series, and will sum them up thusly:

Baffles is the thief-ier foil to SherWat and it's awesome.

I was planning a whole amazingly detailed review but have decided I want to take that time to reread it instead and will probably just end up editing this with a bunch of out of context sex jokes from the text. And if you were hoping I was never going to us those portmanteaus again, you would sadly be mistaken. ...more

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Sep 08, 2017 Andrew Logan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is an adventure. This is nonsense. This is (mainly) fun. It is limited and absurd. It is more a view of how people liked to imagine their society (as a place where people like this might exist) than it is a book that gives a view of a society as it once was.

This edition has a wealth of footnotes, most of which seem right and useful (and some of which are one or the other and some, I think, neither).

Definitely worth a look. Weak ending but overall very much a good read.

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Apr 08, 2020 Lydia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

This is about the exploits of Raffles and Bunny, two criminally-minded yet outwardly respectable young gentleman. The heist/crime aspects were highly entertaining, as was Bunny’s devotion/ love for Raffles. Seriously in almost every paragraph Bunny would talk about Raffles “tousled hair”, and how he was jealous when he talked to women. I would say the the main downside was a bit of casual racism (it was published in 1899 so I’m not surprised). Despite this I found it enjoyable and a quick, fun r ...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Carly rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery, golden-age-mystery

**edited 02/02/14

The Raffles stories are basically the British version of Arsene Lupin: they feature a hyperintelligent Sherlock Holmes-like character who uses his skills to transgress the law rather than defend it. Raffles' adventures are rather more serious and straightforward than the often spoofy escapades of Lupin and his nemesis "Holmlock Shears." Like the Holmes stories, Raffles' adventures are narrated by a loyal and rather less intelligent sidekick. However, narrator Bunny Manders strik ...more

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About E.W. Hornung

E.W. Hornung

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Ernest William Hornung known as Willie, was an English author, most famous for writing the Raffles series of novels about a gentleman thief in late Victorian London.

In addition to his novels and short stories Hornung wrote some war verse, and a play based on the Raffles stories was produced successfully. He was much interested in cricket, and was "a man of large and generous nature, a delightful c ...more