Dennis Wheatley

Dennis Yates Wheatley (1897-1977) was born in Brixton, south London, the son of a wine merchant. His best-known books were occult and supernatural thrillers, starting with The Devil Rides Out (1934); but from the beginning there were science fiction elements there too. Black August (1934) is about a future war, after which Britain is rescued from collapse by a palace coup. His large output includes other science fiction novels, such as They Found Atlantis (1936) (they found Atlantis), Sixty Days to Live (1939) (about the arrival of a destructive comet), and Star of Ill-Omen (1952) (which features flying saucers). A library of witchcraft and adventure. Dennis Wheatley, storyteller supreme, made a lifelong study of the occult. His meticulous research into the black arts reveals almost unbelievable sorcery. He warned. ‘By participating in Satanic Rites, however sham, one can make oneself a focus for Evil.’ No writer cared more about authenticity. This is true not only of his Satanist books, but also of his many other novels.

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Wheatley was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. Dennis was gassed in a chlorine attack during Passchendaele and was invalided out, having served in Flanders, on the Ypres Salient, and in France at Cambrai and Saint-Quentin. In 1919 he took over management of the family’s wine business. In 1931, however, after his father’s death, and with business having declined because of the Great Depression, he was financially over-extended, faced near bankruptcy, and was forced to sell his wine business. Knowing his love of telling tales, his wife suggested he write a book. DW wrote a detective novel called ‘Three Inquisitive People’ which introduced the Duke de Richleau and his friends and it was accepted for publication by Hutchinson, who were to be his publishers for the rest of his life. Before the book could be published he wrote a second book, an adventure story set in Russia and featuring the same set of heroes – ‘The Forbidden Territory’. Hutchinson decided this was a better novel and should be published first. He followed this with an ‘out of series’ novel which he wrote in a fortnight, and then went back to the writing of impeccably researched novels with ‘Black August’, which featured his second principal hero Gregory Sallust, and ‘The Fabulous Valley’. In 1934 he wrote an occult novel, ‘The Devil Rides Out’. Frequently rated as the best occult novel of the twentieth century, and it is his most famous work.

During the Second World War Wheatley was a member of the London Controlling Section, which secretly coordinated strategic military deception and cover plans. His literary talents led to his working with planning staffs for the War Office. He wrote numerous papers for them, including suggestions for dealing with a possible Nazi invasion of Britain (recounted in his works Stranger than Fiction and The Deception Planners). The most famous of his submissions to the Joint Planning Staff of the war cabinet was on “Total War”. He took part in the plans for the Normandy invasions.

After the War, Wheatley bought a mini country mansion in seaside Lymington in Hampshire, and he continued to write books, introducing a third principal character, Roger Brook, whose exploits took place in the Napoleonic era. He worked hard and to a well-disciplined routine. For around eight months of the year DW would devote himself to his writings. He would rise mid-morning and sometimes go to bed well after midnight, depending on how his writing was going. He took the remaining months off to go travelling, partly for pleasure and partly to research his next books. In the days when international travel was a distinct privilege, he went round the world twice, and used countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, Mexico and Egypt as backdrops for his books. During this time several of his books were filmed by Hammer, the most famous being ‘The Devil Rides Out’ with his friend Sir Christopher Lee playing the role of the Duke, a role which he enjoyed enormously.

Dennis Wheatley wrote sixty five books in all, with fifty six being novels and the remainder non-fiction. Eleven featured the Duke de Richleau, eleven Gregory Sallust, and twelve involved Roger Brook. Some nine of these are considered ‘Black Magic’ novels – a genre for which he is particularly famous.

By the nineteen sixties, Wheatley was selling over a million copies of his novels a year; his work was sold in around twenty nine countries and translated into over twenty eight languages, and altogether he is estimated to have sold something like fifty million copies of his books in his lifetime.

He wrote with great intensity and created an amazing variety of characters and situations. The 52 volume Heron Edition of Wheatley’s novels, which includes his espionage and adventure stories, as well as the occult, is the only finely-bound edition in the world.
The craftsmanship is of the highest standard. Scarlet Kidron and lavish golden and black embellishing have been used to startling effect. The illustrations were specially commissioned from English artists.

Gift Suggestion – Why not put your own collection together? If you are interested in more than one book as a gift then please email me with your selections and I will confirm availability and give you a Special Price

Browse Now at Works of Dennis Wheatley