British author Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace lived from 1 April 1875 to 10 February 1932. Wallace, a 12-year-old illegitimate kid from London who was born into poverty, quit school. He joined the military at the age of 21. He covered the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. At the age of 46, he passed very abruptly from untreated diabetes while the first draft of King Kong (1933) was being written. It's been said that Wallace wrote one-fourth of all literature in England. His works have been adapted into more than 160 movies. He is famous for writing "the colonial imagination," the J. G. Reeder detective novels, and The Green Archer serial in addition to his work on King Kong. The Economist referred to him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century" in 1997 despite the fact that the vast majority of his books are no longer in print in the UK but are still popular in Germany. He sold more than 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions. The Edgar Wallace Story, a 50-minute German television documentary, was produced in 1963 and starred his son Bryan Edgar Wallace.