The Most Dangerous Game

Classic Story by Forgotten Author

Richard Connell's “The Most Dangerous Game” is one of the most recognizable fiction stories of the past 125 years. The story of big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford who falls overboard from a yacht and ends up on an island in the Caribbean. He finds a chateau inhabited by Russian Gen. Zaroff, another hunter. Zaroff hunts ship-wreck survivors with a small caliber pistol, giving them a head-start and a knife. The story has excellent tension with the only let-down as the climax is off stage. It originally appeared in Collier's January 19, 1924 issue.

I mentioned a few years back to a friend of mine about Connell's other fiction. I have never run across any other story by Connell in any anthology. I knew there were a few story collections. Was this a one hit-wonder? I decided to do a deep dive into Connell's other fiction.

Richard Connell (1893-1949) attended Georgetown and Harvard. He edited The Harvard Lampoon while at Harvard. Connell served in the U.S. Army in WW1. He wrote for his father's newspaper and The New York American. He was a prolific writer from 1920 to 1941 with over 300 stories. Much of his output was for Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post.

He did have a few appearances in pulp magazines earlier in his career including People's Favorite Magazine, Top-Notch, Detective Story Magazine, and Black Mask. He wrote four novels. To give an idea of shorter fiction, his first story collection in book form The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon and Other Humorous Tales (1922) says it all. He had a series of humorous stories featuring Mr. Pottle that were collected into that book. Apes and Angels (1924) is more humor from the slick magazines. Variety (1925) contains “The Most Dangerous Game” and out of place amidst the comedies and satire. You can find e-texts of The Saturday Evening Post online. I went through some of the issues looking at Connell's stories. The majority are a breezy sort of jazz era/flapper type of story of the 1920s. F. Scott Fitzgerald without the angst.

There are some mystery stories. Murder at Sea (Elk's Magazine, June-Oct. 1928) is a novel and has a scene with a 30 foot anaconda on a ship. There are some mystery stories in The American Magazine and The Elk's Magazine. “Fists” from Saturday Evening Post is a non-humorous boxing story. “The Color of Honor” from the Ku Klux Klan issue of Black Mask (June 1, 1923) is memorable. The pattern appears the non-humorous fiction is earlier in his career.

Connell then went to Hollywood to write screenplays. There are multiple adaptations of “The Most Dangerous Game.” Outside of that story, Connell wrote comedies for Hollywood, especially romantic comedies.

“The Most Dangerous Game” has been reprinted many times, often alongside Jack London's “To Build a Fire,”and Carl Stephenson's “Leiningen Versus the Ants.” I read it first in 9^th grade English class with the teacher prattling about man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. himself. Remember that stuff? You can get the story as a very slender booklet. There are some reprints of Connell story collections very recently but “The Most Dangerous Game” is out of place from the other stories. I like collections and anthologies to have a feel or theme.

An enterprising editor could put together a collection of “Game,” “Color of Honor,” “Fists,” and another three to five mystery stories. Murder at Sea has been very recently reprinted. “The Most Dangerous Game” is a case of one hitting it out of the ball park. I wonder if someone else came up with the idea and he wrote the story? At least he has a classic story read to this day. Most writers for the slick magazines are gone and forgotten now while pulp writers Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, and Robert E. Howard live on. Had “The Most Dangerous Game” been in Argosy or Adventure, the scene of Rainsford killing Zaroff would have been included.