Violet Books

Thomas Grant Springer's The Sword Peddler (New York: Cosmopolitan, 1928) is an Elizabethan swashbuckler having as its hero "a rollicking blade of a rollicking time." Tom dedicated the book to his wife Fleta Campbell Springer, who wrote ghost stories for leading magazines. Tom was also the author of a collection of fantasies of old China, The Red Cord (New York: Brentanos, 1925),

Rupert Sargent Holland's Red Beard of Virginia (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1927) is a swashbuckler of colonial days. A Devonshire duelist finds himself exiled to the Virginia colony. Though captured enroute and suffering from horrors as a galley slave headed for Puerto Rico, he escapes in good time to become a soldier of fortune in old Jamestown. The dustwrapper illustration is by Stafford Good, who provides four illustration plates within.

This edition of Rafael Sabatini's The Lion's Skin was issued by Grosset and Dunlap from 1911 Houghon Mifflin plates, in an elegant dustwrapper depicting the swordsman against leafy wall. A swashbuckler of England and France about a mission of murder, with one brother pitted against another. This edition carries an introduction which Sabatini added in 1925.

Sabatini's Bardelys the Magnificent, Being an Account of the Strange Wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardleys, and of the things that in the course of it befell in in Languedoc, in the year of the Rebellion is seen here in a Grosset and Dunlap reissue from 1905 Arthur Pearson plates. The tale features a hero who is "a handsome, reckless favorite of Louis XIII" but who sews seeds of rebellion against his monarch. Beautiful maidens, castles, swordfights, everything Sabatini promises.

Rafael Sabatini's The Shame of Motley, Being the Memoir of Certain Trasactions in the Liie of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Bianco-Monte, Sometime Fool of the court of Pisaro is shown here in an early reprint from Grosset and Dunlap [from 1926 Houghton Mifflin plates with new preface by Sabatini]. Set in the days of the Borgias, a court jester who is much more than a court jester is the central swashbuckling figure.

And this is a Grosset and Dunlap reissue of Rafael Sabatini's The Sea-Hawk (1926), one of the great, classic swashbucklers. It's about a Cornish gentleman who a la Sir Richard Burton converted to Islam and became a Barbary corsair. On the dustwrapper he is shown in his adopted Arab garb aboard ship with the fair maiden he has saved (or kidnapped depending on who's asking) from a Pasha's harem. Riskier elements never made it to the filmed versions.

Percy F. Westerman's The Quest of the "Golden Hope": A 17th Century Story of Adventure (London: Blaickie, n.d.) was issued I'd guess in the 1930s in this exciting dustwrapper with illustrations on front and spine, and blue pictorial boards underneath with additional spine and front-board artwork again by Frank E. Wiles. The artist also contributes a full color action frontis plus three black and white plates and a "Map of the Island." A swashbuckling sea adventure with loads of derring-do, swordfights, mutinies and good old fashioned maiden rescues.

Duffield Osborne's The Lion's Brood (Doubleday Page, 1901) features elegant pictorial boards plus a tissued action frontispiece by W. Satterlee. This is a highly colored tale of ancient Rome reminiscent of Robert E. Howard's historical fiction. Osborne was compared in his lifetime to H. Rider Haggard and Jules Verne.

J. Reason's Bran the Bronze Smith (London: Dent, 1930) was issued in a handsome pictorial dustwrapper, plus pictorial endpapers and interior illustrations in black&white and in color -- all by the author. This is a Bronze Age hero tale of Britain before the coming of the Romans, dedicated "to Piers Plowman."

This elegant little editon of Alfred De Musset's The Beauty Spot (New York: Brentano's, 1888) is actually one short story in decorative front and back cloth. A romantic adventure set in the time of Louis XV and Madame Pompadour, told in an almost orientalist lush style.

Louise Gerard's A Son of the Sahara (New York: Macaulay, 1922) is rather a swashbuckling bondage fantasy of a virtuous English maiden enslaved by sexy shiek-of-araby type villain. The gorgeous color dustwrapper repeated as b&w frontis, by Frank Tenney Johnson, captures the novel's swashbuckling attributes. Three other plates are by Joseph Franke, who captures the flapper-on-the-auction-block attributes.

Egerton R. Williams, Jr.'s Ridolfo: The Coming of the Dawn, A Tale of the Renaissance (Chicago: McClurg, 1906) poetically unveils the High Adventures, love, and kingship of Ridolfo of the Baglioni of Perugia. A man noted for "strength, ferocity, and magnanimity" he was based on Gianpaolo, greatest of the Baglioni. This first edition is illustrated with stunningly beautiful full color plates by Joseph C. Leyendecker which can be viewed here in our Golden Age of Book Illustration Museum.