Raymond Hull

Works by Raymond Hull:

• The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
• How to Get What You Want
• How to Write a Play
• The Art of Making Wine
• How to Write "How To" Books and Articles
• Home Book of Smoke Cooking Meat, Fish & Game
• Vancouver's Past
• DUO No. 1
• DUO No. 2
• The Male Climacteric
• The Advanced Winemaker's Practical Guide
• Off-Wheel Pottery
• Off-Loom Weaving Book
• Gastown's Gassy Jack: The life and times of John Deighton of England, California and early British Columbia
• Man's Best Friend
• The Art of Learning and Self-Development: Your Competitive Edge
• The Art of Presentation: Your Competitive Edge
• The Art of Making Beer
• How To Win An Election: The complete practical guide to organizing and winning any election campaign
• The Drunkard
• The Drunkard's Revenge
• Wedded to a Villain
• Sweeney Todd or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Roast Pig

From ABC BookWorld, "One of the most famous non-fiction books written in British Columbia, The Peter Principle, was co-authored by Raymond Hull, one of the most active B.C. writers of the 1970s.

Born in Shaftesbury, England on February 27, 1919, Raymond Hull was a public servant prior to his arrival in Vancouver in 1947. In 1949 he responded to an advertisement for a summer creative writing course at UBC and soon discovered he aptitude for writing. Continuing in a succession of low-paying jobs, he underwent eight years of courses and writers' club meetings before attempting to work fulltime as a writer, mostly by selling plays to CBC. He also wrote stage plays and formed the The Gastown Players, a semi-professional company specializing in melodramas. Hull wrote plays for the troupe that included The Drunkard, Son of the Drunkard (now known as The Drunkard's Revenge) and Wedded to a Villain. These were published by Pioneer Drama Service. Hull's best known melodrama, The Drunkard, was an adaptation of a much older work, as was his Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (An actor with the stage name of Todd Slaughter used to do a short melodrama on the British Music Halls in the 1920s or 1930s entitled Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He had a co-actor who took the brief part of Mrs Lovet, the pie maker. He also made a 78 rpm record of this melodrama in the 1930s.) Hull wrote and published his 50-minute play about Sweeney Todd long before it became the subject for a successful Broadway musical. Hull began to teach writing and to collaborate on writing projects. Hull also lived at Gibson's Landing [now called Gibsons] for three years as an experiment until he returned to reside in Vancouver in 1970. Raymond Hull died on June 6, 1985, bequeathing most of his subsequent royalties from six plays and 18 books to the Canadian Authors Association, and most of the rest of his estate, approximately $100,000, to the Vancouver Public Library. His private papers are stored at UBC Special Collections."