John Buchan
Writer of The Thirty-Nine Steps
|
John Buchan |
When John Buchan (1875-1940) wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), he called it
a "shocker," a novel "where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march
just inside the borders of the possible." With secret cyphers, German conspiracies,
ruthless foreign agents, and chance encounters, it fit this description, but the
circumstances of its writing did not; this book was penned out of complete boredom.
Confined to bed in winter of 1914 with an ulcer, Buchan ran out of shockers to read
and decided to make his own. This was not, however, the first he had written. His two
earlier attempts, Prester John (1910) and The Power-House (1913), were popular hits,
and he had already established his reputation in literary circles as a biographer,
historian, and writer of historical fiction.
The Thirty-Nine Steps pits protagonist Richard Hannay, a self-proclaimed ordinary guy,
against a network of German spies preparing to storm Great Britain. It was the first
in a series of five novels featuring Hannay, who would later outsmart Turks during
World War I in Greenmantle (1916) and gangsters in three other books.
After finishing The Thirty-Nine Steps, Buchan served as an intelligence officer and war
correspondent and was promoted in 1917 to direct the propaganda wing of the Foreign Office,
due to his knowledge of German, his experience with secret codes from his time as a South
African bureaucrat at the turn of the century, and his political appeal as a moderate Tory.
After the war, he gained more accolades, becoming a member of Parliament in 1927, Lord High
Commissioner of the Church of Scotland in 1933, and Governor-General of Canada in 1935. In
the same year, Alfred Hitchcock directed a film adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps, adding
a love interest to the story and stripping it of any mention of Germany or impending attack.
Germany, however, remained of great importance to Buchan; the last major political act of his
life was to pledge Canada's support to the allies in World War II.
By La Jolla Playhouse Dramaturgy Intern Maxwell C. Goldberg. Photo: John Buchan.
