Arts
Find a comfy corner to enjoy these rambling tales of yore
Harrison Ainsworth
Writer of English Gothic, Ainsworth’s hefty tomes of novels take you to a pastoral Tudor and Stuart England- with witchcraft at Pendle Hill, or Herne the Hunter who is an evil pagan spirit haunting the Windsor forest and castle. They are all Walter Scott-like romances- full of historical personages, colourful descriptions which capture the pageantry, heraldry and bustle of royal England and rambling word portraits of woodland or country landscape or architecture. Not to mention the love affairs, plots and counter plots. If you can endure the long-winded and amorphous storylines, these novels can be satisfying.
Most of the Ainsworth corpus can be read on gutenberg.org and archive.org. Try The Lancashire Witches, Windsor Castle and Old St. Paul’s.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Conan Doyle hated being ‘handcuffed’ to Sherlock Holmes, and ironically, it was the historical novels- now forgotten- that he was more paternal about. He penned eight novels in the genre (all of them available free online).
Most of them seem swashbuckling war stories for men and boys- against the clamour of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 or the Hundred Years’ War. But the novel The Refugees allows us into the glittering court of the Sun King, Louis XIV- with all its intrigue and powdered mistresses rising and eclipsing in and out of royal favour. Rodney Stone, a boxing novel, has elements of a gothic mystery while The Tragedy of the Korosko is about a group of European tourists being captured by Dervish warriors in Egypt.
Read on gutenberg.org
James Fenimore Cooper
Best-known for his The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper really began with an Austen-like novel before finding his footing far away from the world of upper class manners- in the American frontier amidst woodsmen and Delaware Indians.
His second novel was an espionage tale called The Spy, and it was the first American novel to become a bestseller at home and abroad.
Then came the Leatherstocking series featuring Natty Bumppo the woodsman- five books altogether. Among his sea stories are The Red Rover and The Water Witch.
He was the pioneer of a new form of American literature- which casts a nostalgic look at the frontier and Native American life from the 17th to the 19th Centuries.
Enjoy all Cooper books on openlibrary.org
Sir Walter Scott
Last but most lingering- it could be heartwarming to return to Walter Scott. Set against the rustic old land of purple heather, the adventures- though relegated today to the world of childhood reading- are rich, enjoyable yarns if you are OK with ambling pace and long descriptions.
All Scott’s historical romances can be read on archive.org and gutenberg.org