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To Right the Wrong
Excerpt from To Right the Wrong
I should like to add that, in common with all students of the seventeenth century, i feel under the deepest obligation to Pro fessor Gardiner for his History of tbe Great Civil War, and own him, indeed, my special thanks for a book which cheered many tedious hours of illness.
I should like to add that, in common with all students of the seventeenth century, i feel under the deepest obligation to Pro fessor Gardiner for his History of tbe Great Civil War, and own him, indeed, my special thanks for a book which cheered many tedious hours of illness.
Kindle Edition
Published August 24, 2018
About the author
Edna Lyall
199 books4 followersEdna Lyall was the pseudonym used by Ada Ellen Bayley. Bayly was born in Brighton, the youngest of four children of a barrister. At an early age, she lost both her parents and she spent her youth with an uncle in Surrey and in a Brighton private school. Bayly never married and she seems to have spent her adult life living in with her two married sisters and her brother, a clergyman in Bosbury in Herefordshire. In 1879, she published her first novel, Won by Waiting, under the pen name of "Edna Lyall" (apparently derived from transposing letters from Ada Ellen Bayly). The book was not a success. Success came with We Two, based on the life of Charles Bradlaugh, a social reformer and advocate of free thought. Her historical novel In the Golden Days was the last book read to John Ruskin on his deathbed. Bayly wrote eighteen novels.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 20, 2020
Civil Wars are the most violently divisive of events that can afflict any country. England has had one, America has had one. Writers have feasted on the inherent human drama they entail ever since.
To Right the Wrong is an historical novel about the 17th century English version, and a very good one it is too. The split loyalties of public life are brought to life through the private woes of the Heyworth family.
Royalists by inclination, the most accomplished son of the brood, Joscelyn Heyworth, becomes sympathetic to the Roundhead cause after a chance meeting with John Hampden, the real hero of the story even though he dies about half way through, as he did during the civil war itself.
As for Charles I, we get a quick glimpse of him as early as the opening chapter enlisting an army in Lincoln, 'cold, indifferent, reserved, he had nothing to give in return for all the devotion of this multitude.' Cromwell pops ups here and there but this isn't his story.
A welcome female presence is to be found in Clemency Coriton and Joscelyn's twelve year old sister Rosamond. The former sends a series of letters from Gloucester during the historic siege, the latter shows unusual bravery on more than one occasion.
For a short time the injured Joscelyn becomes prisoner to the poet and Royalist Sir John Denham, fights under Sir William Waller and drops in on his old tutor from Cambridge, Benjamin Whichcote the Puritan divine. These are all interesting characters from the time.
As if being estranged from his family isn't had enough, further problems for him exist on his chosen side in the shape of the superbly named Original Sin Smith, a raging Puritan whose personal hatred for Joscelyn is grounded in simple jealousy.
For the most part the civil war doesn't go well for Joscelyn and he fails to escape it unscathed, both physically and psychologically. Edna Lyall did an excellent of of representing those conflicting loyalties:
"If only matters were less strangely mixed," said Joscelyn, his face full of weary perplexity. "If only all that one cared for and reverenced were on the one side, and all that one would fain abolish on the other!"
I feel the same way about Brexit, our own (mostly) bloodless civil war. I voted to remain in the EU and would do the same tomorrow if given the chance, people I care about voted to leave.
We try to stay civil, but it feels at times as though we're at war.
To Right the Wrong is an historical novel about the 17th century English version, and a very good one it is too. The split loyalties of public life are brought to life through the private woes of the Heyworth family.
Royalists by inclination, the most accomplished son of the brood, Joscelyn Heyworth, becomes sympathetic to the Roundhead cause after a chance meeting with John Hampden, the real hero of the story even though he dies about half way through, as he did during the civil war itself.
As for Charles I, we get a quick glimpse of him as early as the opening chapter enlisting an army in Lincoln, 'cold, indifferent, reserved, he had nothing to give in return for all the devotion of this multitude.' Cromwell pops ups here and there but this isn't his story.
A welcome female presence is to be found in Clemency Coriton and Joscelyn's twelve year old sister Rosamond. The former sends a series of letters from Gloucester during the historic siege, the latter shows unusual bravery on more than one occasion.
For a short time the injured Joscelyn becomes prisoner to the poet and Royalist Sir John Denham, fights under Sir William Waller and drops in on his old tutor from Cambridge, Benjamin Whichcote the Puritan divine. These are all interesting characters from the time.
As if being estranged from his family isn't had enough, further problems for him exist on his chosen side in the shape of the superbly named Original Sin Smith, a raging Puritan whose personal hatred for Joscelyn is grounded in simple jealousy.
For the most part the civil war doesn't go well for Joscelyn and he fails to escape it unscathed, both physically and psychologically. Edna Lyall did an excellent of of representing those conflicting loyalties:
"If only matters were less strangely mixed," said Joscelyn, his face full of weary perplexity. "If only all that one cared for and reverenced were on the one side, and all that one would fain abolish on the other!"
I feel the same way about Brexit, our own (mostly) bloodless civil war. I voted to remain in the EU and would do the same tomorrow if given the chance, people I care about voted to leave.
We try to stay civil, but it feels at times as though we're at war.
Displaying 1 of 1 review