I found a lovely cache of file folders put aside for future me and not for the archives of my university (Manitoba). I spent the morning reading the contents of one labelled Research. The items range from background, texts, biographies and analyses of long-gone, but not always forgotten, writers whose works I sort of thought about some day adapting to film or stage, to essays and profiles of writers who interested me, including the famous feminist classic, “I Want a Wife” by Judy Syfers, that first appeared in Ms, December, 1972—plus, plus, plus.
My fascination with swashbuckling romances can be deduced from the material on Horace Walpole (1717-1797). He invented the Gothic novel with The Castle of Otranto, published in December, 1764. The Preface to the First Edition offers a frame—and a guide—to what it contains: authenticity, authority, antiquity, artistic value. And to add suspense or mystery . Walpole uses two other techniques: energizing diction, with a list of sample adjectives, adverbs and nouns that contribute to “Gothic effects”, as well as Interrupted events: not one damn thing after another but one damn thing bumping into, or interrupted by the next other. You can see why I saved that information.
I also saved The Life and Work of Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950) who had a prolific output (novels collections, short stories, nonfiction - and one play). If you’re as old as I am you might remember three of his novels that were made into classic films: The SeaHawk, Captain Blood and Scaramouche. You might remember Errol Flynn in the first two but do you remember Stewart Granger in a re-make of Scaramouche (1952)?
Then there was Ann Radcliffe (1764-), and her four-volume, blood-curdling Gothic thriller, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), among many, some still published. I read it and looked at it seriously for a while. But I’ve never liked horror and I was too busy. Some other life.
How about Baroness Orczy (1865-1947), detective story-writer and novelist, best known for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)?
“They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those Frenchmen seek him everywhere.
Is he in Heaven? — Is he in Hell?
That damned annoying Pimpernel.”
Over the years, staged versions and movies have kept the name alive until maybe not now, in younger audiences. It depends, I suppose, on whether they watch Youtube.
Anthony Hope, pseudonym of Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933), is best known to me and to most with a memory for his first work, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). The last film of it that I know of starred Stewart Granger (1913-1993).
So I liked high romance.