Essential Novelists - Frederick Marryat E-Book

Frederick Marryat

• Herausgeber: Tacet Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Essential Novelists
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 1268

Beschreibung

Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Frederick Marryatwhich areThe Children of the New Forest and The Phantom Ship. Captain Frederick Marryat was a Royal Navy officer, a novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens. He is noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story, and for a widely used system of maritime flag signalling, known as Marryat's Code. Novels selected for this book: - The Children of the New Forest - The Phantom Ship This is one of many books in the series Essential Novelists. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the authors.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Author

The Children of the New Forest

The Phantom Ship

About the Publisher

Author

FREDERICK MARRYAT, who published under the name Captain Marryat, only began writing children's books towards the end of his literary career, affectionately calling these five works, "my little income." Marryat based his nearly all of his writings on his own experiences at sea. In fact, he tried to run away from school to pursue a life at sea three times before his father finally found a place for the fourteen-year-old on board the Imperieuse in September 1806. Marryat actually began writing at sea, producing his first manuscript, that of The Naval Officer; or, Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Frank Midway on board the Ariadne in the Atlantic during 1828. By the end of 1830, Marryat resigned from the navy to embark upon his writing career and in 1831, was one of the co-founders of the Metropolitan magazine.

Although Marryat wrote his early adventure stories for an adult audience, older children found these tales just as engaging. His biographer, Oliver Warner noted that Marryat's second book, Peter Simple "has always been read by older children, and it used to be said to have been responsible for many entries into the navy" (quoted in Spence, 197). However, while Marryat's children's books recount tales of adventure and survival, Marryat continues to combine these with a measure of didactic moral instruction. Thus A.A. Milne remembers Masterman Ready as "combin[ing] desert island adventure with a high moral tone; jam and powder in the usual proportions" (quoted in Spence, 199).

Marryat's works, often subtitled "For Young People", occupy a significant position in Victorian children's adventure literature. They span the gap between traditional eighteenth-century adventure stories originally written for adult consumption and only later adopted by children to the advent of real adventure stories intended for children. By the mid-nineteenth century, the primarily didactic and moral writings of evangelical writers formerly regarded as the only proper reading material for children was increasingly challenged by less overtly instructional and more truly entertaining works. Thus both in material and tone, Marryat's work, while still displaying didactic tendencies but nonetheless based in exotic adventure, aptly reflect the shifting mid-Victorian attitudes towards what was considered proper children's reading material.

Up until and throughout the nineteenth century, English children eagerly perused Daniel Defoe's The Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe... Written by Himself. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe and its contemporary, equally popular Gulliver's Travels, was intended for adults although both were largely enjoyed by younger readers. Both were extensively abridged and re-published in simpler forms. For instance, in a study of boy's adventure stories, Dennis Butts estimates that between 1719 and 1819, Robinson Crusoe underwent approximately 150 abridgements published as chapbooks for children (446). Amidst the flurry of Robinsonnades, stories modeled on Robinson Crusoe, J.D. Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson written in 1812 and translated into English in 1814 stands out. However these early adventure stories remained largely condemned by outspoken evangelical supporters and furthermore, the emphasis on real facts and scientific knowledge embodied by the popular Peter Parley publications of the 1830s resulted in the criticism of the old Robinsonnades as too fantastical.

Butts points out that Marryat almost singlehandedly reintroduces the adventure story for children and inspired the works of later nineteenth-century writers, most famously R.M. Ballantyne, R.L. Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard who all tell of adventures in exotic locales and a strong dose of British superiority (449). Indeed, while Marryat's early work, notably Masterman Ready remains didactic, at points overtly moral in tone and moreover encompasses a Peter Parley-esque emphasis on scientific observation and focus on nature, Marryat also produced exciting tales of hardship and survival. In fact, Butts notes that Marryat's later children's books, for instance The Children of the New Forest lacks the underlying piousness of Masterman Ready and sets the stage for later children's writers to eschew moral instruction altogether in favor of good English schoolboy fun.

The Children of the New Forest

Chapter One.

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THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH I am about to relate to my juvenile readers took place in the year 1647. By referring to the history of England of that date they will find that King Charles the First, against whom the Commons of England had rebelled, after a civil war of nearly five years, had been defeated, and was confined as a prisoner at Hampton Court. The Cavaliers, or the party who fought for King Charles, had all been dispersed, and the Parliamentary army under the command of Cromwell were beginning to control the Commons.

It was in the month of November in this year that King Charles, accompanied by Sir John Berkely Ashburnham and Legg, made his escape from Hampton Court, and rode as fast as the horses could carry them towards that part of Hampshire which led to the New Forest. The king expected that his friends had provided a vessel in which he might escape to France; but in this he was disappointed. There was no vessel ready, and after riding for some time along the shore he resolved to go to Titchfield, a seat belonging to the Earl of Southampton. After a long consultation with those who attended him, he yielded to their advice, which was, to trust to Colonel Hammond, who was governor of the Isle of Wight for the Parliament, but who was supposed to be friendly to the king. Whatever might be the feelings of commiseration of Colonel Hammond towards a king so unfortunately situated, he was firm in his duties towards his employers, and the consequence was that King Charles found himself again a prisoner in Carisbrook Castle.

But we must now leave the king, and retrace history to the commencement of the civil war. A short distance from the town of Lymington, which is not far from Titchfield, where the king took shelter, but on the other side of the Southampton Water, and south of the New Forest, to which it adjoins, was a property called Arnwood, which belonged to a Cavalier of the name of Beverley. It was at that time a property of considerable value, being very extensive, and the park ornamented with valuable timber; for it abutted on the New Forest, and might have been supposed to have been a continuation of it. This Colonel Beverley, as we must call him, for he rose to that rank in the king’s army, was a valued friend and companion of Prince Rupert’s, and commanded several troops of cavalry. He was ever at his side in the brilliant charges made by this gallant prince, and at last fell in his arms at the battle of Naseby. Colonel Beverley had married into the family of the Villiers, and the issue of his marriage was two sons and two daughters; but his zeal and sense of duty had induced him, at the commencement of the war, to leave his wife and family at Arnwood, and he was fated never to meet them again. The news of his death had such an effect upon Mrs Beverley, already worn with anxiety on her husband’s account, that a few months afterwards she followed him to an early tomb, leaving the four children under the charge of an elderly relative till such time as the family of the Villiers could protect them; but, as will appear by our history, this was not at that period possible. The life of a king and many other lives were in jeopardy, and the orphans remained at Arnwood, still under the care of their elderly relation, at the time that our history commences.