The Prisoner of Zenda

In the late 19th century, the average British person considered the European continent to be something quite foreign, and its eastern parts, partly consisting of recently independent small countries, something quite exotic. Anthony Hope used such notions to set his 1894 adventure novel *The Prisoner of Zenda* in the fictional country of ‘Ruritania’. The novel, which would spawn the genre of so-called ‘Ruritanian rom…