Rafael Sabatini Biography

British novelist, born in Jesi, Italy, educated in Switzerland and Portugal. An enthusiastic popular historian and biographer of Cesare Borgia, Sabatini is best remembered for his swashbuckling historical romances and stories of piracy. His most enduring novels combine an imaginative reconstruction of actual historical events with adventure and fantasy. Perhaps the best examples of his technique are the Captain Blood novels: Captain Blood, His Odyssey (1922), The Chronicles of Captain Blood (1931), and The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1936). His romance of the French Revolution, Scaramouche (1921), gave another enduring fictional character to the worlds of popular literature and cinema. Other successful works include The Sea-Hawk (1915), The Black Swan (1915), and Mistress Wilding (1924), all tales of piracy; The Banner of the Bull (1915), a fictionalized account of life under the Borgias; and the ambitious two-volume Historical Nights' Entertainments (1919–37).