Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure: A Critical Biography

by Brian Taves

This critical biography chronicles both the actual travels and the philosophical meanderings of Talbot Mundy, one of the pioneers of the fantasy and adventure genre. Less celebrated than his contemporaries Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad, Mundy was no less gifted when it came to the literary portrayal of faraway lands. He was one of the first Western writers to show an appreciation of Eastern culture, and his writing became an outlet for his radical ideas on religion and philosophy. At the age of sixteen, Mundy left his native England to begin his life of adventure--a journey that took him from India to the Middle East to Tibet and finally to America, which became his adopted home. The American spirit of adventure matched Mundy's own, and it was here that he found a true audience for his work. This book explores Mundy's oeuvre--much of it set in exotic locales through which he himself had traveled--and considers both his novels and his lesser known writing, as well as his film and radio work. Books such as Rung Ho!, King-of the Khyber Rifles, Caves of Terror, Purple Pirate and Tros of Samothrace are discussed and placed within the framework of Mundy's life and philosophy. The final chapter evaluates the enduring value of his writings. Appendices include a comprehensive list of Mundy's works and a chronological listing by their original publication dates.

Genres: Biography, History

310 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2005

Reviews

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well researched, and very well written. Everything you ever wanted to know abut Talbot Mundy (and certain early pulp magazines such as Adventure) is in this book.

[Tyler Wolanin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely fantastic biography and discussion of Mundy's works.

I am in the somewhat odd position of never having read Talbot Mundy himself; but I am reasonably well versed in other parts of the interwar pulp magazine world, and flatter myself as having some appreciation of the lineage of the adventure story, from dime novels on down to the present day. Thus, I was interested to learn of an author from that world I had never heard of before in a Washington Post book article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...) early in the pandemic. I had to rove far and wide to find a copy, but it was absolutely worth it.

Mundy's own extraordinary life is described, from an (unfortunately not well-documented) youth and early adulthood holding down various laboring and administrative roles in the British colonies around the rim of the Indian Ocean, to a destitute arrival in New York, to the beginnings of a writing career that took him to the highs and lows of wealth and genre prestige across the rest of his life. The book fits his writing into this chronology, and situates the stories themselves into his oeuvre, into the philosophical background he was immersed in at the time (from Christian Science to Theosophy to a brief dabbling in spiritualism), to whatever business or romantic endeavors he was engaged in at the time (which were likely to blow up in his face). As the subtitle "a critical biography" promises, the importance (or sometimes lack thereof) of the works is discussed, and Mundy is contextualized both in his genre and in popular tastes and critical reception of his time. Importantly for me, the works themselves were described before being investigated, so the commentary and criticism was highly understandable to a newcomer. I can give this book the second-best-possible praise as having made me understand Talbot Mundy, as well as the best-possible-praise as having made me want to read him.