Fiction

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Fiction’

91
Well Out Of It Jane Austen

Anne Elliot is mortified to hear Frederick Wentworth’s opinion of her, but manages to find comfort in his words.

Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth meet again seven years after Anne rejected Frederick’s proposal of marriage, under pressure from a trusted friend. A chance remark by the Captain, repeated by Anne’s sister Mary, leads them both to convince themselves that love is dead – and that they are happier that way.

Read

92
The Knight’s Tale Clay Lane

Two noble youths of ancient Thebes fall for the same princess.

Chaucer’s twenty-four ‘Canterbury Tales’, told by pilgrims travelling from London to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury in the late 14th century, open with the Knight’s Tale. A curious blend of Norman chivalry and classical mythology, it reminds us that any civilisation worthy of the name is firmly founded on Greco-Roman culture.

Read

93
Kindergarten Politics John Buchan

John Buchan’s dashing adventurer Sandy Arbuthnot didn’t think much of foreign policy after the Great War.

John Buchan was not only a writer of entertaining adventure tales, but a Governor General of Canada and a first-rate military historian. Here, he gives his take on the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War through his dashing hero Sandy Arbuthnot.

Read

94
The Peasant, the Penny and Marko the Rich Clay Lane

Marko adopts drastic measures to get out of repaying the loan of a penny.

Marko the Rich and his daughter Anastasia enter into other Russian folk-tales, in which he is not necessarily as amiable as he is in this one. On this occasion, he goes to extreme lengths to sidle out of a negligible debt.

Read

95
No Thoroughfare Clay Lane

At twenty-five and owner of his own business, Walter Wilding thought his world was secure, but it was about to be rocked to its foundations.

‘No Thoroughfare’ came out in 1867 as both a novel and a play, and was co-authored by Charles Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins. It is essentially a thriller, but it has some familiar Dickensian touches, such as the moral that character is what matters, not parentage or wealth.

Read

96
The Duel Charles Dickens

Sir Mulberry Hawk’s coarse conduct towards Kate Nickleby has awoken a spark of decency in Lord Frederick Verisopht.

Sir Mulberry Hawk has preyed upon the weak character of Lord Frederick Verisopht for years, but the young nobleman has finally stood up to his ‘friend’ over Hawk’s ungentlemanly conduct towards pretty Kate Nickleby. The breach is irreparable, and has come at last to a duel.

Read