Jeffery FarnolRecensioni

Pretty cute, quick read. When George Bellew is rejected by the girl he thought he would marry, he asks his butler for advice. The butler finally concedes his opinion that George was never in love at all, but summarizes the typical ways men act when they are crossed in love. George decides his best option is to disappear. So he sets off on a walking tour. Before too long he meets a little boy, also named George, who lives with his maiden aunt. The two Georges take to one another immediately. The aunt is beautiful and young, but plagued by money troubles. The usual sort of thing ensues. Nice side characters. Cute little boy.

Sort of skimmed it. Cute in sections, but there were whole chapters that failed to hold my interest, where the ne'er-do-wells plot and scheme in thick nineteenth century New York slang. The rest of the plot is about Geoffrey, a wealthy young man who decides he needs more purpose in life and finds it by renting a room at a tenement house for impoverished people and seeing how the other side lives. Of course, he immediately falls in love with a poor but noble gentlewoman who is bending her every effort to put food on the table and keep her young brother out of serious trouble.

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Recently re-read this after many years and still love it. It's a proper swashbuckling, bodice-ripping, sea-faring rip-roarer set in about 1650, full of colourful characters and colourful piratical language - though all strangely innocent now. In between there's lots to be learned about surviving on a desert island. The hero is consumed with vengeful thoughts which will likely destroy his chances of ending up happy with the heroine, and this theme is rather repetitiously rammed home. I didn't claim that it was great literature! You don't find out how it ends unless you read the sequel "Martin Conisby's vengeance". I'd call it comfort reading. Please don't tell anyone in my book group!½

Sous le coup d'un grand chagrin d'amour, un jeune et séduisant millionnaire américain, Georges Bellew, a fui New York. Il erre dans la douce campagne anglaise, n'aspirant qu'à l'oubli et à la solitude.
Comment résister cependant à l'appel de ce petit garçon en larmes qui lui confie sa détresse: il cherche le "trésor" qui sauvera de la ruine sa chère tante Anthéa. En vain...
En Georges découvre Anthéa - ravissante jeune fille mais si farouchement fière qu'elle refuse tout secours. Quel stratagème imaginer? Quel sortilège invoquer?
Quand la lune est pleine et brille de tout son éclat d'or et d'argent, elle a, dit-on, des pouvoirs magiques. L'enfant en est sûr et Georges, bientôt, est près d'y croire...½

I think that I read this when I was about thirteen and, rereading it now, i can see what appealed to me. Pure escapism, it is entirely an Edwardian wet dream of manly arts (horse racing, boxing) and social mobility. Although the hero, of course, is a gentleman on his mother's side anyway.

The story moves along at an unbelievably swift pace - three days to set up a mansion in London and every possible assistance from an assortment of poachers, preachers and madmen met under hedges. Also just a touch anti-semitic by today's standards. All the good guys recognise immediately that the hero is one of them and the bad guys immediately dislike him - so he gets into a lot of fights. This book puts the swash into the buckle with avengeance.

A rollicking read in the manner of a cut price Charles Dickens without the social awareness.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1794675.html

This was the best-selling novel of 1911, a romantic tale set in about 1811 where you know what is going to happen from the very first page, when Peter Vibart is promised a vast legacy if he will marry Sophia Sefton, but declares he would rather not. He flees metropolitan life to the village of Sissinghurst in Kent, where he encounters many good-hearted comic yokels and falls in love with a mysterious woman who comes to live with him in his cottage. She has firm, well-rounded arms. (That's arms, I say, arms.) It takes Peter (unlike the reader) most of the book to work out her real identity, and to deal with his rival for the marital legacy, his rather two-dimensionally villainous cousin, though I guess he is distracted by the occasional staggering coincidence and his anachronistic inclination towards Christian Science doctrine. I had never heard of Farnol before but apparently he was one of the most successful popular novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and I suppose I can see the attraction of his undemanding yet breathless style. (Sissinghurst, by the way, was called Milkstreet in 1811 and changed its name only later in the century; more anachronism.)

What a great collection of Farnol writings Pat Bryan has put together here. He went out and found pieces of poetry, a boxing story, a piece in praise of place and some romantic fluff - all typically well turned by a wonderful wordsmith. I love this stuff.

An interesting title - a bold presentation of the characteristic attributes of a particular personality type. It was a fun read, although the principal characters are so very different from me. This has inspired me to try to come up with a set of titles that clearly portray various personality types and how they approach life so that I can submerge myself in the characteristics and gain a better understanding of 'what makes them tick'.

my absolute favourite. Great reading.

A romance of the Jacobites. A rattling good read

The best selling historical romance of 1910. The first and best.

Excellent book of its genre.

A nice collection of short stories. I gave it four stars as opposed to three and a half because it finishes with six essays about life in Bombay early last century. They are nicely written and give good food to the active imagination such that the reader can see quite well through Mr. Farnol's eyes. These would have been nice little vignettes for publication in daily British newspapers of the day.