![]() ![]() The author was John Buchan, a 40-year-old Scotsman who had already published 36 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and over 800 articles. However, The Thirty-Nine Steps appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine between July and September 1915 with publication in book form following in October. There was bloody stalemate in France and Flanders and Gallipoli Zeppelins bombed British targets, and U-boats threatened to starve Britain into submission. It was a grim year Britain was ensnared in the most terrible war the world had ever known, and the "over by Christmas" optimism of 1914 was now only a distant memory. T HE YEAR 1915 should have been an inauspicious time to publish a piece of light fiction. Rather, it was a thriller-its writer called it a "shocker"-whose hero, wrongly suspected of murder, goes on the run and encounters a ruthless German spy ring. But it was not a dense political, historical, or diplomatic work. ![]() One hundred years on, something of 1915 lives with us still: a book published in that year and set during the period leading up to the war then raging. ![]()
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