Violet Books Art Gallery

Here's a dustwrapper illustration by Charles E. Brock, Jeffery's best & best known illustrator, this time for Sir John Dering, A Romantic Comedy. This is a 1951 New Impression of the 1923 Sampson Low title. The tale is a swashbuckling classic of old Sussex, in days when such places were distant & rural & frought with colorful dangers & equally colorful pleasantries. It is one of Jeffery's most thrilling tales of feuds, smugglers, duels, daring night escapes, & a villainous tyrant who deserves a terrific downfall.

This is another Sampson Low edition of Sir John Dering but with an entirely different dustwrapper (of the same tavern scene however). Jeffery's love of the Sussex Downs is palpable in the lighter moments of an action-filled adventure of love & revenge. This edition was issued shortly after Jeffery's death. The publisher added a lovely large portrait of the elderly author to the back of the dustwrapper, which I've tinkered with a bit for color effect to illustrate the head of the present page, above.

Now & then Jeffery would write something that was not a swashbuckler though hardly less romantic, set in the early days of Queen Victoria's reign. This is the 1951 Little Brown first edition of The Glad Summer, Being a truly Sentimental Idyll. It is shown in a bright attractive dustwrapper with no swords in sight. It's a bit scarcer than some of his titles no doubt because the public didn't want so many copies if there wasn't going to be any swordfighting, though how our hero outwits & outfights the scheming Wolverton ought to prove close enough for most of us.

Black Bartlemy's Treasure(1920) is seen here in a 1940 Sampson Low dustwrapper, once again by the illustrator most associated with Farnol, Charles E. Brock. Charles also provided a separate spine panel vignette (not shown). The ad-writers did not need to exaggerate to declare this pirate novel to be, "A stirring story of sheer adventure on the romance-haunted waters of the old Spanish Main." It's one of Jeffery's best known tales & deservedly so.

The title in its entirety is intentionally amusing: Over the Hills, A Romance of the Fifteen: Being the Narrative of Adam (called Thursday) with Particulars of his Adventures, His Joys & Sorrows, His Friends & right-beloved Enemy (London: Sampson Low, new impression 1951 of his 1930 swashbuckler). The blurb writers rightly said of this novel "Mr Jeffery Farnol has given us a splendid romance of a valiant coward in the Old Pretender's ill-starred rebellion." The tale tells how the foundling Adam Thursday became the pawn of a sinister revenge.

Several of the Little Brown dustwrappers, such as this specimen, were given the same general layout so that they look rather like a set, though issued over many years. In The Jade of Destiny (1931), as the dustwrapper notes, Jeffery gave to the world "a glowing romance of the days of Queen Bess -- a romance dealing to some extent with one of the many plots against the life of the great Queen." The mixture of love, wit & high adventure in Regency England was what Jeffery did best & echoes of his work are to be found in all Regency novels by all authors right down to the present decade.

Peregrine's Progress (Boston: Little Brown, 1922) is a regency swashbuckler featuring some of the same gentry encountered in The Broad Highway, hence something of a sequel. A fop, crushed to realize those closest to him regard him as nothing more but a ladylike mollycoddle, runs off to the high road of adventure to prove his manhood. "A dashing tale full of action, crowded with tense moments, with gypsies, rogues, men of fashion, lovely ladies & ladies not so lovely," to quote the jacket text. Regency detective Jasper Shrig puts in a notable appearance.

"When Jeffery Farnol, from the neighbourhood of Horsham in Sussex, opens this romance of rural England, motor cars were unknown," begins the jacket text for this tale of roving adventure along the "Pilgrim's Way" through Sussex, Devonshire & Cornwall. What a lovely copy this is of The 'Piping Times': A Sentimental Romance of Those days when there was less Heroism but more of everything else than in these death-filled, deathless years of Grace, Grief, & Glory. The copy shown is the Canadian first (Toronto: Ryerson, 1945). The tale is notable for one of Jeffery's spunkiest of spunky damsels: "a wild, untamed American woman who rides high-spirited horses, who can throw deftly a lariat, or use any kind of dagger, or firearm that we may wish to mention." Since Farnol had himself an American wife, dare we imagine some degree of a portrait of his own beloved?

Our Admiral Betty, A Romance (Boston: Little Brown, 1918) is shown here in a 1925 reissue. The dustwrapper plus a frontispiece are by F. Vaux Wilson. Taking place in the Georgian era, the same period as his best known novel The Broad Highway, "It is a romance, pure & simple, bristling with stirring episodes, with a delightful company of characters," to quote the jacket. The color pictorial is repeated as a b&w frontispiece.

Here again is Our Admiral Betty, A Romance but in the UK edition (Sampson Low, 1918; New Impression 1951), with dustwrapper by Charles Brock. An early Georgian swashbuckler with plenty of flashing blades & feminine coquetry, "everything we have learnt to expect from the felicitous pen of Jeffery Farnol," as the jacket reassures us, populated with delightful characters who are by turns gallant & foolish.

When on occasion Jeffery undertook to write a modern tale, his Romantist ideals nevertheless surfaced with plenty of action & romance throughout. Many of the same swashbuckling attitudes & themes seen in Jeffery's historicals are here transferred to a contemporary setting which was sufficiently different from his usual setting that Jeffery had a temporary set-back selling the manuscript, & came close to destroying it as unlucky. Good thing he didn't, as it was to prove to be a popular success. Another Day is the tale of a son of a tycoon who, believing himself a murderer, flees New York for Sussex. The book is shown here in the Little Brown first edition dustwrapper of 1926.

Beltane the Smith (Boston: Little Brown, 1915) is shown here in a 1927 edition with a delightful full color pictorial by Arthur Becher, who also provides several lovely interior plates in b&w. A bit of a change from Jefferey's usual Elizabethan setting, this one's a winning, medieval tale of knightly courage, of chivalry, tourneys, brawls, & forest battles with broadswords -- as well as love for a maiden & songs sung for sunlight & flowers. Beltane, not knowing of his bright heritage, was raised by a hermit of the greenwood, from whom he learnt ancient philosophies, woodcraft, & smithing. Then one day in his youth a mysterious knight appeared who begins to teach him swordplay & horsemanship. A gorgeous tale overall.