Elswyth Thane

Elswyth Thane is best-known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. Dawn s Early Light is the first novel in the series. In it, colonial Williamsburg comes alive. Thane centers her novel around four major characters: the aristrocratic St. John Sprague, who becomes George Washington s aide; Regina Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoilt by a season in London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from England on the eve of the war and thought of himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an indigent mother. But we also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene, Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that brilliant galaxy paying their roles not as historical figures but as men. We see de Kalb s gallant death under a cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate to the swamp-encircled camp that was Marion s stronghold on the Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis and Lafayette, which ended in Cornwallis s unlucky stand at Yorktown. Dawn s Early Light is the human story behind our first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and laughing through it to the dawn of a better world. "

DAWNS EARLY LIGHT

Originally published in 1939. Reprinted in arrangement with Hawthorn Books.

Tryst

The Story of Its Preservation

Mount Vernon is Ours

Volume 5 of The Williamsburg Series. This is the adventures of the twins Calvert and Camilla Scott from the First World War through 1934. Both of them go overseas, Camilla to act as nurse's aid in the hospitals run by her cousins in London and Gloucestershire. Calvert to serve briefly on the crew of a big gun. Chiefly it is Camilla's story, her futile love for a Frenchman; her involvement in the stormy passions of Jenny and the American who - with Calvert - had managed to survive the destruction of the gun crew, and who nearly lost his life thereafter. The threads of previous stories are fitted into place, gathering momentum, seeming to build up into a love story between the duke's daughter and the poor mechanic. And in the last quarter, death and disaster; a brief interlude between Camilla and a young Nazi; and the story ends with two matings, and the build-up for World War II.

Kissing Kin

Leila Meacham

Elswyth Thane is best-known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. Dawn's Early Light is the first novel in the series. In it, colonial Williamsburg comes alive. Thane centers her novel around four major characters: the aristrocratic St. John Sprague, who becomes George Washington's aide; Regina Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoilt by a season in London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from England on the eve of the war and thought of himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an indigent mother. But we also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene, Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that brilliant galaxy not as historical figures but as men and women. We see de Kalb's gallant death under a cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate Marion's swamp-encircled stronghold on the Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis and Lafayette. Dawn's Early Light is the human story behind our first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and laughing through it to the dawn of a better world.

Dawn's Early Light

Williamsburg, Virginia, is once more the scene in this second book of Thane's series, but the time is now the 1860s. Some of the characters are the descendants of those in the first novel, Dawn's Early Light, and Grandmother Day, who was 16 when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, is now 95. Once, she can remember, it was Massachusetts that was threatening to secede instead of South Carolina. And when she was a girl they never seemed to think much about Yankees, one way or the other. But when a Yankee comes to Williamsburg in the tense autumn of 1860 and red-haired Eden Day falls heels over head in love with him, her great grandmother takes the long view—besides, she likes him herself. The story moves from Williamsburg to Richmond to Washington and back again during the dreadful years between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. In addition to the fictitious characters, Jeb Stuart and General Lee, Pickett, Magruder, and Stonewall Jackson are all seen through the eyes of the men who followed them into battle. Like Dawn's Early Light, Yankee Stranger is full of action and romance, but most importantly, it presents a vivid re-creation of a vanished world.

Yankee Stranger

This Was Tomorrow

The sixth volume in the Williamsburg series, this is a satisfying return to the Spragues and the Days - again from Williamsburg and New York, to London and Farthingale. The best of the series since The Light Heart, a good yarn with pace and momentum, and a gratifying gathering up of the threads in the years leading up to World War II. Sue has gone; Jeff is her heir, the surviving male Day. And the story interest shifts back and forth from Jeff, fearful that a bad heart will play him false, and Sylvia, his cousin, willing to take that chance, to Evadne, caught in the meshes of Moral Rearmament, Hermione, difficult and unpleasant as ever (or more so) and Sylvia's brother, Stephen, who loves Evadne on sight, but finds her intractable and headstrong during a difficult year and more. There's a feel of England on verge of war, and one mad sortie into a fanatical Germany, where Evadne goes on a "mission". But the main lure of the story lies in meeting again the wide-flung members of an attractive family.

Elswyth Thane

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