Penshurst Castle in the Days of Sir Philip Sidney

by Emma Marshall

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Hardcover

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

Emma Marshall, born Emma Martin in Cromer, Norfolk, in 1830, was a prolific British children's author, one who published more than two hundred novels in the course of her career. She married banker Hugh Graham Marshall in 1854, going to live with him in Clifton, in Bristol, Somerset. The Marshalls had nine daughters, the youngest of whom, - Christabel Gertrude Marshall, aka Christopher Marie St. John - was an author, a playwright, and a noted campaigner for women's suffrage. Marshall began writing in 1861, choosing, for each of her stories, a famous structure or person from history, and weaving a fictional tale around it. Her best-selling books were Under Salisbury Spire, Penshurst Castle and Winchester Meads. She died in 1899.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best of Emma Marshall's books. I enjoyed this one a lot.

[Grace Harwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm just about to start a course on English Country Houses and the literary imagination and the very first poem we are studying is Ben Johnson's "To Penshurst". With this in view, I picked this up free off Kindle and had a read about the house in the time of Sir Philip Sidney. I'm so glad I did. Not only is the poem depictive of a pastoral idyll, but this novel really gives you a sense of the beautiful landscape surrounding the estate in Kent.

This is a novel from the 1890s from a novelist I'd never heard of before, but according to the end pages of the book, has evidently written a lot of histories and popular novels. This one was a kind of Wolf Hall for the 1890s. Being as it was written at that time (fin-de-siecle) there's a bit of gothicism in there too, with the main character's son being kidnapped by dastardly connivers of non-protestant religions.

The historical facts are all true (I wikipedia'd Sidney's life to check!) but Marshall really brings him to life as a paragon of virtue and the lord of the idyll he reigns over. In fact, the way it is written, one can't help but wonder if Marshall was somewhat in love with Sidney herself (as are all her female characters). There was a happy ending (apart from the gangrene in Sidney's leg which kills him, of course; that was rather unfortunate, but an historical fact, so Marshall couldn't really do much with that!) The landscape descriptions are beautiful. In short, I really enjoyed reading this and will be downloading some more of Marshall's work (also free on Kindle).

I must admit, I went "To Penshurst" myself once when I was an undergraduate studying literature and it really is a beautiful place. There was no mention of Ben Johnson there though at that time. Still, this book is well worth a read and the place is well worth a visit too.