HOPE, ANTHONY, the pen-name of Sir ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS , British novelist, who was born on Feb. 9, 1863, the second son of the Rev. E. C. Hawkins, vicar of St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London. He was educated at Marlborough and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president of the Union Society. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1877. He won a great popular success with the publication (May 1894) of The Prisoner of Zenda. This was followed a few weeks later by The Dolly Dialogues (previously published in separate instal ments in the Westminster Gazette) . The Prisoner of Zenda, ow ing something to the Prince Otto of R. L. Stevenson, established a fashion for what was christened, after its fictitious locality, "Ruritanian romance" ; while the Dolly Dialogues was the fore runner of a whole school of epigrammatic drawing-room comedy. A dramatic version of The Prisoner of Zenda, with Sir George (then Mr.) Alexander as"Rudolph Rassendyll,"had a long run at the St. James's Theatre. In 1894 also appeared The God in the Car, a novel suggested by the influence on English society of Cecil Rhodes's career; and Half a Hero, a complementary study of Australian politics. In a series of novels Anthony Hope ad vanced from his light comedy and gallant romantic inventions to the graver kind of fiction of which The God in the Car had been an earlier essay. Other notable novels were: Quisante (1900), a study of English society face to face with a political genius of an alien type; Tristram of Blent (1900, a study of family pride ; the witty The Intrusions of Peggy (1902) ; Double Harness 0904); A Servant of the Public (19o5) ; The Great Miss Driver (1908) and Second String (1909) . Mr. Hawkins married (1903) Miss Eliza beth Somerville Sheldon of New York. He was knighted in 1918.
See his Memories and Notes (1927).