The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

We will start our discussion of Peter Simple by Frederick Marryat on February 1.
Please click on the links for preliminary information.

More info and the reading schedule will be posted in the coming week.

The title and the blurb remind me forcefully of "Simplicius Simplicissimus" - somehow Peter's literary ancestor by about 150 years, and by land. I read it a long time ago and enjoyed it. Did Marryat know that book? (I think it had not yet been translated into English in his time)

I'll do a bit of research on that, Sabagrey. I read excerpts from the Grimmelshausen book way back when during university. I was a German and French Lit major.

Marryat was a naval officer before and during the Napoleonic Wars, so his novels of life at sea are based on real life experience. After he retired from the Royal Navy he started writing and pursuing scientific studies.
So it appears that the similarity of Simple and Simplicissimus is just a coincidence.
I've read his novel The Phantom Ship and enjoyed it, and also The Children of the New Forest, a charming children's story.

I read the Phantom Ship sometime in the early 1970s, and, despite the critics (see Wikipedia) I rather enjoyed it, although its anti-Catholic sentiments sometimes got in the way of the story. I tried a couple of others, whose titles I no longer remember, but didn’t finish them. In one case because of his bouts of dislike for Americans which seemed irrelevant to story. Not too surprising in nineteenth-century British naval officers.

I am not joining in on this read due to many other reading commitments. It looks so interesting. I am reading The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope, and I ran across this:

"Did you ever read Marryat's novel, Harcourt?" "What, Peter Simple?" "No, that other one: I think of going out as another Japhet in search of a father.

Trollope, Anthony. The Bertrams (p. 23). Kindle Edition.

Anyone recognize what "that other one" might be?

I don't know, Ginny, but it might be Mr. Midshipman Easy, another well-known book by Marryat.