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Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Arthur Quiller-Couch 'Fort Amity.Fort Amity was published in 1904.Quiller-Couch was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare's plays (in the New Shakespeare, published by Cambridge University Press, with Dover Wilson) and several critical works, including Studies in Literature (1918) and On the Art of Reading (1920). He edited a successor to his verse anthology: Oxford Book of English Prose, which was published in 1923. He left his autobiography, Memories and Opinions, unfinished; it was nevertheless published in 1945.

Chapter 1 No.1

This etext prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1904

TO HENRY NEWBOLT.

My dear Newbolt,

Two schoolfellows, who had sat together in the Sixth at Clifton, met at Paddington some twenty years later and travelled down to enter their two sons at one school. On their way, while the boys shyly became acquainted, the fathers discussed the project of this story; a small matter in comparison with the real business of that day-but that it happened so gives me the opportunity of dedicating Fort Amity to you, its editor in The Monthly Review, as a reminder to outlast the short life granted in these days to novels.

Yet if either of our sons shall turn its pages some years hence, though but to remind himself of his first journey to school, I hope he will not lay it down too contemptuously. The tale has, for its own purposes, so seriously confused the geography of Fort Amitié, that he may search the map and end by doubting if any such fortress ever existed and stood a siege: but I trust it will leave him in no doubt of what his elders understood by honour and friendship.

Of these two themes, at any rate, I have composed it, and dedicate it to a poet who has sung nobly of both. "Like to the generations of leaves are those of men"-but while we last, let these deciduous pages commemorate the day when we two went back to school four strong. May they also contain nothing unworthy to survive us in our two fellow-travellers!

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.

The Haven, April 20th, 1904.

PREFACE

More than once, attempting a story of high and passionate love-in this book, for example, and still more recklessly in my tale of Sir John Constantine-I have had to pause and ask myself the elementary question: Can such a story, if at once true and exemplary, conclude otherwise than in sorrow?

The great artists in poetry and prose fiction seem to consent that it cannot: and this, I think, not because-understanding love as they do, with all its wonder and wild desire-they would conduct it to life-long bliss if they could, but simply because they cannot fit it into this muddy vesture of decay. They may dismiss us in the end with peace and consolation:

And calm of mind, all passion spent.

And we know or have known that of its impulse among us lesser folk it holifies and populates this world. But our own transience qualifies it. Only when love here claims to be above the world-"All for Love, and the World well Lost"-we feel that its exorbitance must wreck it here and now, however it may shine hereafter. That is why all the great legends of love-the tale of Tristan and Iseult, for instance- are unhappy legends: as that is why they still tease us.

I hope these remarks will not be deemed too pompous for the preface to a story in which true love is crossed by a soldier's sense of honour. The theme is a variant on a great commonplace: and, following my habit, I let the incidents and characters have their own way without the author's comment or interference.

Q.

CONTENTS.

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Other books by Arthur Quiller-Couch

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Shining Ferry

Shining Ferry

Literature

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Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Arthur Quiller-Couch 'Shining Ferry.'Shining Ferry was first published in 1905.Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He published his Dead Man's Rock (a romance in the vein of Stevenson's Treasure Island) in 1887, and he followed this up with Troy Town (1888) and The Splendid Spur (1889). After some journalistic experience in London, mainly as a contributor to the Speaker, in 1891 he settled at Fowey in Cornwall. He published in 1896 a series of critical articles, Adventures in Criticism, and in 1898 he completed Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel, St Ives. With the exception of the parodies entitled Green Bays: Verses and Parodies (1893), his poetical work is contained in Poems and Ballads (1896). In 1895 he published an anthology from the sixteenth and seventeenth-century English lyrists, The Golden Pomp, followed in 1900 by an equally successful Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (1900). He was made a Bard of Gorseth Kernow in 1928, taking the Bardic name Marghak Cough ('Red Knight').Quiller-Couch was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare's plays (in the New Shakespeare, published by Cambridge University Press, with Dover Wilson) and several critical works, including Studies in Literature (1918) and On the Art of Reading (1920). He edited a successor to his verse anthology: Oxford Book of English Prose, which was published in 1923. He left his autobiography, Memories and Opinions, unfinished; it was nevertheless published in 1945.

Brother Copas

Brother Copas

Literature

5.0

Dodo Collections brings you another classic from Arthur Quiller-Couch, 'Brother Copas.'To those who are acquainted with the literary standing of "Q" the lightness and slightness of his novels always come as a surprise. They have, however, a distinctive touch of learning here and there and a fair and elegant style. The setting in the present case is easily identified as the Hospital of St. Cross at Winchester, although Sir Quiller-Couch confusingly calls his town Merchester suggesting Melchester, the name given by Mr. Hardy to the cathedral town of Salisbury. The dissensions and difficulties in this community of noble poverty, the great unsettled question of high church or low church, and the final solution by means of that charity which covers a multitude of sins is the theme of rother Copas. There is a delightful Swinburnian translation of a late Latin poem-the sort of thing that Sir Quiller-Couch does con amore. There is a town pageant which brings peace after dissension and there is a perfectly unreal and perfectly impossible but equally charming American child. But, on the whole, there is enough background and enough setting, enough learning, and enough ease of writing to make the whole book very readable and pleasant for an idle half-hour. If this is the only way in which Sir Quiller-Couch can earn the liberty to do his literary studies we pardon his novels.Quiller-Couch was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare's plays (in the New Shakespeare, published by Cambridge University Press, with Dover Wilson) and several critical works, including Studies in Literature (1918) and On the Art of Reading (1920). He edited a successor to his verse anthology: Oxford Book of English Prose, which was published in 1923. He left his autobiography, Memories and Opinions, unfinished; it was nevertheless published in 1945.

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