For Them That Trespass

by Ernest Raymond

A rich, warm novel about a man's life and loves that is as hauntingly beautiful as love itself.

Set against the romantic backdrop of England in the early 1900s, it is the story of Christopher Drew, a renowned dramatist and poet, and by all accounts, a model husband and father. When we first meet Christy, he is celebrating his silver wedding anniversary surrounded by his adoring wife and children. Christy has everything that life can offer--wealth, fame, and a supremely happy family--but as he listens to the toasts and speeches, his mind travels back thirty years to the time when, as a young man with a burning literary ambition, he had an affair with a prostitute in one of the seedier sections of London. Years later, Christy is afraid that he will lose his family and place in society if he reveals his scandalous past. What Christy finally does shakes the old Victorian world and proves that he has at last learned the true meaning of human love.

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Ernest Raymond (1888–1974) was a British novelist, best known for his first novel, Tell England (1922), set in World War I. His next biggest success was We, The Accused (1935), generally thought to be a reworking of the Hawley Harvey Crippen case, which was made into a BBC drama starring Ian Holm in 1980. He wrote over fifty novels. Raymond's autobiography was published in two volumes; the first, The Story of My Days, 1888-1922, was published in 1968; the second, Please You, Draw Near, 1922-1968, in 1969. He was awarded an OBE in 1972, and died in 1974.

Raymond was educated at St Paul's and at Chichester Theological College. He was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1914 and served on six fronts in the First World War. He resigned Holy Orders in 1923. He wrote many books, including the novels Damascus Gate (1923), A Chorus Ending (1951), The City and the Dream (1958, which concluded his London Gallery series of novels portraying London life in the first half of the twentieth century), Mr Olim (1961), and The Bethany Road (1967). Other titles include Two Gentlemen of Rome:The Story of Keats and Shelley (1952), and Paris, City of Enchantment (1961).

George Orwell in 1945 praised Raymond as a "natural novelist" who could portray convincingly the lives of ordinary people. In particular he praised We, the Accused for its emotional power, while criticizing the clumsy and long-winded way it is written.

(Source: Wikipedia).