The origin of Bacon’s friendship with Prospero was supposedly told in a now-lost short story Bellairs composed for a short story anthology. Whatever the story may have been, the two have had their fair share of adventures, both together on their own. For example, Bacon narrates a brief tale about once upon a time exorcising a town from the spirit of witch [18], and arrives on Prospero’s doorstep fresh from England where an experiment with a hard-of-hearing brass head nearly got him run out of the country.

Described as having a stout, ruddy-faced, with either a bald spot or a badly trimmed tonsure, Bacon loves good food and drink (perhaps a good Snake-Year Sherry) and is a careful thinker, usually able to keep one step ahead of any foe.

Bacon journeys with Prospero in their quest to stop the sorcerer Melichus.

Bellairs’ version of Bacon is based on some of the more legendary aspects of the real Franciscan monk Roger Bacon (c. 1214- 1294) whose intelligence and inventiveness earned him the nickname “the astounding Doctor.” Much of this legendary material was attributed to Bacon after his death, specifically during the 16th century when his fame as an occultist really flowered, along with the expansion Renaissance magic, and popular astrology in Elizabethan England.

Bacon appears elsewhere in Bellairs and Strickland’s novels (though not as Prospero’s friend), including The Curse of the Blue Figurine [22], The Doom of the Haunted Opera [132], and The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost [56].