Guy Newell Boothby was an Australian author and writer who lived from October 13, 1867, to February 26, 1905. He was known for writing shocking stories for variety magazines near the end of the 1800s. He mostly lived in England. He is best known for writing the Dr. Nikola series, which is about an occultist criminal mastermind who is like Fu Manchu in the Victorian era, and Pharos, the Egyptian, whlich is about Gothic Egypt, mummies' curses, and supernatural payback. He was friends with and learned from Rudyard Kipling, and George Orwell loved reading his books. Boothby was born in Adelaide to a well-known family in South Australia, which was still a British colony at the time. His grandfather, Benjamin Boothby (1803-1868), was a controversial judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia from 1853 to 1867. His father, Thomas Wilde Boothby, was a member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly for a time. Three of his uncles were important colony administrators. Boothby's mother, who was born in England and whom he looked up to, split up with his father when he was about seven years old and went back to England with their children.
