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Edward

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The Southern Tradition by Eugene D. Genovese

Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters by George Fitzhugh

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

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Edward is Currently Reading

Edward is currently reading

Presbyterianism: Its History, Doctrine, Government and Worship

by Samuel Miller

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— Mar 02, 2026 03:09AM

Mar 01, 2026 01:30PM

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Romans: The Law, Chapter 7: 1 to 8: 4

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

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Feb 27, 2026 04:21AM

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The Scarlet Pimpernel (Modern Library Classics)

by Emmuska Orczy

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Edward said: " There's a moment in this book that challenged my longstanding doubts about the relevance of "plot" to my appreciation of a novel.

I've been opining for years that there is only one basic story in fiction (the one outlined by Donald Miller in his othe There's a moment in this book that challenged my longstanding doubts about the relevance of "plot" to my appreciation of a novel.

I've been opining for years that there is only one basic story in fiction (the one outlined by Donald Miller in his otherwise useless book), and that focus on a novel's plot tends to obscure its finer details and richer qualities.

But in TSP, there's a pretty original (I had never seen it before) episode that shifts how the story unfolds in a surprising way. In fact, Orczy manages to put across the idea that two characters had entirely distinct and mutually exclusive interpretations of the episode while smuggling in a hidden level of evidence (hidden to everyone except one character as well as the reader) which allows a stunning instance, in the ensuing chapters, of situational irony.

Probably it has been done many other times and books, and I am clean forgetting about them. There's some similar stuff a few times in Far From the Madding Crowd but those are more about Gabriel's sad broken heart or whatever. They are NOT about matters of life and death, stuff about stakes in a plot, which is the case in TSP!

Good job Orczy!

The other kind of thing you will often see, contrary to the Hardy use of dramatic irony (one character thinks about things all alone, or is a hidden witness to something he sees through a peephole or window that shatters his beliefs etc, like Gabriel), is the Daphne DuMaurier thing of just leaving the "true" explanation mysterious, a la the notorious endings of Rachel and Rebecca.

But not Orczy!

These people back in the day understood a little something called human nature (hello?) and instead of wondering, "Wait what the hell? Why are they doing this?" you are saying, "wow that would actually be really scary and confusing if that happened, but she can't really tell anyone because she would be killed oh well maybe God will save her"

Although Hungarian, Orczy movee to England as a child and was educated there. One assumes that her Europeanness influences her use of English. Certainly she has some curious views of the nationalities she undertakes to describe in TSP.

She has some family resemblance to Rafael Sabatini in her writing style. In fact, both have an international flavor (he was half-Italian, half-English) that brings up even more family resemblances. And some early-20th English novelists were becoming far more international in their scope of fiction than the Victorians had been, while also reaching back into historical periods to comment on their own contemporary politics.

I was disappointed to find that Orczy, in the run up to WWI, was one of the ringleaders of the White Feather ladies who chose that kind of symbolic gift to shame men they regarded as cowards for refusing to die for the British Empire.

Main point though: Orczy's literary style isn't entirely explained by the period in which she lived (but partially yes, and it also has traces of Doyle, for example in the era); much of it, especially its stiltedness, is her Hungarian extraction (IMO). ...more "

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Edward’s Quotes

“I am sentimental about my childhood—not my own particular childhood, but the civilization which I grew up in and which is now, I suppose, just about at its last kick.”
― George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

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“If you made a list of Hilda’s remarks throughout the day, you’d find three bracketed together at the top—’We can’t afford it’, ‘It’s a great saving’, and ‘I don’t know where the money’s to come from’.”
― George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

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“Well, Hilda and I were married, and right from the start it was a flop. Why did you marry her? you say. But why did you marry yours? These things happen to us. I wonder whether you’ll believe that during the first two or three years I had serious thoughts of killing Hilda. Of course in practice one never does these things, they’re only a kind of fantasy that one enjoys thinking about. Besides, chaps who murder their wives always get copped.”
― George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

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“in the years ahead discover his métier as a writer, that enduring profession of skilled liars,”
― James Carlos Blake, The Killings of Stanley Ketchel

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