English author Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward, well known as Sax Rohmer, lived from 15 February 1883 to 1 June 1959. He is most known for the Dr. Fu Manchu book series, which stars the notorious master criminal. Rohmer, like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, claimed affiliation with a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn group. Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and M. P. Shiel appears to have been Rohmer's principal authors of literary inspiration. After penning Little Tich in 1911, Richard Rohmer wrote the first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, first published in a serialization from October 1912 to June 1913. Rohmer didn't return to the saga with Daughter of Fu Mancha until 1931. Stoll had successfully adapted the first three works into a pair of serials in the 1920s. He started the series for Collier's in 1930 but was unhappy with the female supervillain Head Centre at the start. Later, for the Sumuru series, he would go back to Drake Roscoe and his female supervillain.
