Rafael Sabatini

Rafael Sabatini (29 April 1875 – 13 February 1950) was an Italian/English writer of novels of romance and adventure.
He is best known for his worldwide bestsellers:
The Sea Hawk (1915), a tale of an Elizabethan Englishman among the pirates of the Barbary Coast
Scaramouche (1921), a tale of the French Revolution in which a fugitive hides out in a commedia dell'arte troupe and later becomes a fencing master (Sabatini wrote a sequel ten years later: Scaramouche the Kingmaker (1931))
Captain Blood (a.k.a. The Odyssey of Captain Blood) (1922), in which the title character is admiral of a fleet of pirate ships. (Sabatini wrote two additional Captain Blood books comprising short stories, but they are not sequels: The Chronicles of Captain Blood (a.k.a. Captain Blood Returns) (1931), and The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1936))
Bellarion the Fortunate (1926), about a cunning young man who finds himself immersed in the politics of fifteenth-century Italy
In all, Sabatini produced 31 novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books, numerous uncollected short stories, and several plays.

Rafael Sabatini was born in Iesi, Italy, to an English mother (Anna Trafford) and Italian father. His parents were opera singers who became teachers.

At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages, living with his grandfather in England, attending school in Portugal, and, as a teenager, in Switzerland. By the time he was 17, when he returned to England to live permanently, he had mastered five languages. He quickly added a sixth language – English – to his linguistic collection. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, “all the best stories are written in English".

After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. In 1905, he married Ruth Goad Dixon, the daughter of a Liverpool merchant. It took Sabatini roughly a quarter of a century of hard work before he attained success with Scaramouche in 1921. The novel, an historical romance set during the French Revolution, became an international bestseller. It was followed by the equally successful Captain Blood (1922). All of his earlier books were rushed into reprints, the most popular of which was The Sea Hawk (1915). Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year and maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed.

Several of his novels were adapted into films during the silent era, and the first three of these books were made into notable films in the sound era, in 1940, 1952, and 1935 respectively. His third novel was made into a famous "lost" film, Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), directed by King Vidor, starring John Gilbert, and long viewable only in a fragment excerpted in Vidor's silent comedy Show People (1928). A few intact reels have recently been discovered in Europe. The fully restored version premièred on TCM on 11 January 2010.

Two silent adaptations of Sabatini novels which do survive intact are Rex Ingram's Scaramouche (1923) starring Ramón Novarro, and The Sea Hawk (1924) directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Milton Sills. The 1940 film The Sea Hawk, with Errol Flynn, is not a remake but a wholly new story which just used the title. A silent version of Captain Blood (1924), starring J. Warren Kerrigan, is partly lost, surviving only in an incomplete copy in the Library of Congress. The Black Swan (1942) was filmed starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara.

Sabatini's only son, Rafael-Angelo (nicknamed Binkie), was killed in a car crash on 1 April 1927. In 1931, Sabatini and his wife Ruth divorced. Later that year he moved from London to Clifford, Herefordshire, near Hay-on-Wye. In 1935, he married the sculptor Christine Dixon (née Wood), his former sister-in-law. They suffered further tragedy when Christine's son, Lancelot Dixon, was killed in a flying accident on the day he received his RAF wings; he flew his aeroplane over his family's house, but the plane went out of control and crashed in flames right before the observers' eyes.

By the 1940s, illness forced Sabatini to slow his prolific method of composition, though he did write several additional works even during that time.

Sabatini died in Switzerland February 13, 1950. He was buried in Adelboden, Switzerland. On his headstone his wife had written, "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad", the first line of Scaramouche.

Series

Scaramouche

• Scaramouche (1921)
• Scaramouche the King-Maker (1931)

Captain Blood

• Tales of the Brethren of the Main (a series of short stories first published in Premier Magazine from 1920–1921)
• Captain Blood (also known as Captain Blood: His Odyssey, 1922)
• Captain Blood Returns (also known as The Chronicles of Captain Blood, 1931)
• The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1936)

Novels

• The Lovers of Yvonne (also known as The Suitors of Yvonne, 1902)
• The Tavern Knight (1904)
• Bardelys the Magnificent (1906)
• The Trampling of the Lilies (1906)
• Love-At-Arms: Being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino during the dominion of the High and Mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro (1907)
• The Shame of Motley (1908)
• St. Martin's Summer (also known as The Queen's Messenger, 1909)
• Mistress Wilding (also known as Anthony Wilding, 1910)
• The Lion's Skin (1911)
• The Strolling Saint (1913)
• The Gates of Doom (1914)
• The Sea Hawk (1915)
• The Snare (1917)
• Fortune's Fool (1923)
• The Carolinian (1924)
• Bellarion the Fortunate (1926)
• The Nuptials of Corbal (1927)
• The Hounds of God (1928)
• The Romantic Prince (1929)
• The Reaping (1929)
• The King's Minion (also known as The Minion, 1930)
• The Black Swan (1932)
• The Stalking Horse (1933)
• Venetian Masque (1934)
• Chivalry (1935)
• The Lost King (1937)
• The Sword of Islam (1939)
• The Marquis of Carabas (also known as Master-At-Arms, 1940)
• Columbus (1941)
• King In Prussia (also known as The Birth of Mischief, 1944)
• The Gamester (1949)

Collections

• The Justice of the Duke (1912)
• The Banner of the Bull (1915)
• Turbulent Tales (1946)

Posthumous collections

• Saga of the Sea (omnibus comprising The Sea Hawk, The Black Swan and Captain Blood, 1953)
• Sinner, Saint And Jester: A Trilogy in Romantic Adventure (omnibus comprising The Snare, The Strolling Saint and The Shame of Motley, 1954)
• In the Shadow of the Guillotine (omnibus comprising Scaramouche, The Marquis of Carabas and The Lost King, 1955)
• A Fair Head of Angling Stories (1989)
• The Fortunes of Casanova and Other Stories (1994, stories originally published 1907–1921 & 1934)
• The Outlaws of Falkensteig (2000, stories originally published 1900–1902)
• The Camisade: And Other Stories of the French Revolution (2001, stories originally published 1900–1916)
• The Evidence of the Sword and Other Mysteries, ed. Jesse Knight (Crippen & Landru, 2006, stories originally published 1898-1916)

Plays

• Bardelys the Magnificent (with Henry Hamilton)
• Fugitives
• In the Snare (with Leon M. Lion)
• Scaramouche
• The Rattlesnake (also known as The Carolinian, 1922, with J. E. Harold Terry)
• The Tyrant: An Episode in the Career of Cesare Borgia, a Play in Four Acts (1925)

Anthologies edited

• A Century of Sea Stories (1935)
• A Century of Historical Stories (1936)

Nonfiction

• The Life of Cesare Borgia (1912)
• Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History (1913)
• The Historical Nights' Entertainment (1917)
• The Historical Nights' Entertainment – Series 2 (1919)
• The Historical Nights' Entertainment – Series 3 (1938)
• Heroic Lives (1934)