A Bid for Fortune or Dr Nikola’s Vendetta

Guy Newell Boothby was an Australian novelist and writer, born in Adelaide, son of Thomas Wilde Boothby, who for a time was a member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly. Guy Boothby’s grandfather was Benjamin Boothby (1803-1868), judge of the supreme court of South Australia from 1853 to 1867. When Boothby was six, he traveled to England with his mother. Around 1890, he took the position of private secretary to the mayor of Adelaide, Australia, but was not content with the work due to little opportunity for advancement. He turned to his writing talents, writing librettos for 2 comic operas and stories about Australian life. Boothby moved back to the United Kingdom in 1894. He wrote over 50 books in the course of a decade, before dying of pneumonia in Bournemouth. Some of Boothby’s earlier works were non-fiction, but later he turned to writing novels. He was once well known for his series of five novels about Doctor Nikola, an occultist anti-hero seeking immortality and world domination.