Oppenheim, E: Great Impersonation

E. Phillips Oppenheim, in full Edward Phillips Oppenheim, (born Oct. 22, 1866, London, Eng.-died Feb. 3, 1946, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands, U.K.), internationally popular British author of novels and short stories dealing with international espionage and intrigue. After leaving school at age 17 to help in his father's leather business, Oppenheim wrote in his spare time. His first novel, Expiation (1886), and subsequent thrillers caught the fancy of a wealthy New York businessman who bought out the leather business at the turn of the century and made Oppenheim a high-salaried director. He was thus freed to devote the major part of his time to writing. The novels, volumes of short stories, and plays that followed, totaling more than 150, were peopled with sophisticated heroes, adventurous spies, and dashing noblemen. Among his well-known works are The Long Arm of Mannister (1910), The Moving Finger (1911), and The Great Impersonation (1920). (britannica.com) The Great Impersonation is a mystery novel published in 1920. German Leopold von Ragastein meets his doppelganger, Englishman Everard Dominey, in Africa, and plans to murder him and steal his identity to spy on English high society just prior to World War I. However, doubts of the returned Dominey's true identity begin to arise in this tale of romance, political intrigue, and a (literally) haunting past. (wikipedia.org)

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Edward Phillips Oppenheim was an English author who lived from October 22, 1866, to February 3, 1946. He wrote a lot of best-selling genre fiction with glamorous characters, international drama, and fast-paced action. They were popular forms of fun because they were easy to read. In 1927, he was on the cover of Time magazine. Edward Phillips Oppenheim was born in Tottenham, London, on October 22, 1866. His parents were Henrietta Susannah Temperley Budd and a leather merchant named Edward John Oppenheim. He went to Wyggeston Grammar School until the sixth form in 1883, but had to quit because his family couldn't afford it. For almost twenty years, he worked in his father's business. His father helped pay for the release of his first book, which did just enough to cover its costs. It was under the name "Anthony Partridge" that he released five of his books from 1908 to 1912. To help Oppenheim's writing career, Julien Stevens Ulman (1865-1920), a rich New York leather merchant who liked Oppenheim's books, bought the leather works around 1900 and made him a paid director. He quickly came up with a method that worked and made a name for himself. John Buchan, who was just starting out as a suspense writer, called Oppenheim "my master in fiction" and "the greatest Jewish writer since Isaiah" in 1913.