''The Man Who Bought London'' is a 1915

crime novel Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, crime novel, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives or fiction that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a profession ...

by the British writer

Edgar Wallace Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was a British writer of crime and adventure fiction. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was ...

. It was originally published as a magazine

serialisation In computing, serialization (or serialisation, also referred to as pickling in Python) is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored (e.g. files in secondary storage devices, data buffers in ...

. An American, Kerry King, leads a syndicate of millionaires seeking to buy up large chunks of London in order to redevelop them for the benefit of the poorer inhabitants. However, his plan is threatened by the schemes of a former business partner, Hermann Zeberlieff.

Film adaptation

It was adapted for a 1916 British silent film of the same title directed by

Floyd Martin Thornton Floyd Martin Thornton (often credited as F. Martin Thornton, November 4, 1884 – April 1, 1956) was an American screenwriter and film director active in the United Kingdom in the 1910s and 1920s. He also directed films for the Natural Color ...

and starring Evelyn Boucher and Roy Travers. It was the first of many screen adaptations of Wallace's novels and stories.Bergfelder p. 141 The tale was adapted again under the title ''

Time to Remember ''Time to Remember'' is a 1962 British crime film directed by Charles Jarrott and starring Yvonne Monlaur, Harry H. Corbett and Robert Rietty. It was written by Arthur La Bern, loosely based on the 1915 Edgar Wallace novel '' The Man Who Bough ...

'' (1962), directed by

Charles Jarrott Charles Jarrott (16 June 19274 March 2011) was a British film and television director. He was best known for costume dramas he directed for producer Hal B. Wallis, among them '' Anne of the Thousand Days'', which earned him a Golden Globe for B ...

. It was an entry in the ''

Edgar Wallace Mysteries The ''Edgar Wallace Mysteries'' is a British second-feature film series mainly produced at Merton Park Studios for Anglo-Amalgamated. There were 48 films in the series, which were released between 1960 and 1965. The series was screened as ''Th ...

'' series of second features made at

Merton Park Studios Merton Park Studios, opened in 1929, was a British film production studio located at Long Lodge, 269 Kingston Road in Merton Park, South London. In the 1940s, it was owned by Piprodia Entertainment, Nikhanj Films and Film Producers Guild. Peter M ...

References

Bibliography

* Bergfelder, Tim. ''International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s''. Berghahn Books, 2005. * Clark, Neil. ''Stranger than Fiction: The Life of Edgar Wallace, the Man Who Created King Kong''. The History Press, 2015. * Goble, Alan. ''The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film''. Walter de Gruyter, 1999. 1915 British novels Novels by Edgar Wallace British crime novels British novels adapted into films Novels set in London {{1910s-crime-novel-stub