Thomas Burke (author)

Thomas Burke (author)

Thomas Burke (29 November 1886 – 22 September 1945) was a British author. He was born in Eltham, London (back then still part of Kent).

His first successful publication was Limehouse Nights (1916), a collection of stories centered around life in the poverty-stricken Limehouse district of London. Many of Burke's books feature the Chinese character Quong Lee as narrator.

"The Lamplit Hour", an incidental poem from Limehouse Nights, was set to music in the United States by Arthur Penn in 1919. That same year, American film director D. W. Griffith used another tale from the collection, "The Chink and the Child" as the basis of his screenplay for the movie Broken Blossoms. Griffith based his film Dream Street (1921) on Burke's "Gina of Chinatown" and "Song of the Lamp".