Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

DOROTHY VERNON is an Elizabethan maid, but there is in her a suggestion of willful womanhood as it reveals itself through the ages, a touch of the eternal feminine in her defiance of authority for the sake of the man she loves. She is not a historic figure, interesting on account of its distance from the women of today; she is flesh and blood of this twenty-first century, all gentleness and roused fury in defense of her all; all love and strength and fortitude under persecution and opposition, a living, loving, lovable girl, ready to risk all for the sake of him," a living woman of today. She will appeal more potently, we think, to the popular imagination than did even the heroine of the author's earlier book, because she is depicted in more vigorous lines and stronger colors, because Mr. Major has mastered his trade. The elopement of Dorothy Vernon with John Manners is an historic episode; Haddon Hall belongs to this day to their descendants, the Dukes of Rutland. Queen Elizabeth visited the castle; the state chamber, where she rested overnight, is still shown to visitors in its original state. Mary Stuart, too, enters the story, to rouse the jealousy of Dorothy. In short, the lover of the accuracy of history in fiction may rest contented with the story; but he will probably care little for that once he has been caught by the spirit and freshness of the romance. —The Presbyterian Banner DOROTHY is a splendid creation, a superb creature of brains, beauty, force, capacity, and passion, a riot of energy, love and red blood. She is the fairest, fiercest, strongest, most tender heroine that ever woke up a jaded novel reader and made him realize that life will be worth living so long as the writers of fiction create her like.... The story has brains,' go,' virility, gumption, and originality." —The Boston Herald ONE of the most extraordinary of recent successes in America was a story entitled When Knighthood Was In Flower. In his new volume the author of that book takes us to Elizabethan England, and writes a romance round the lives of John Manners, second son of the Earl of Rutland, and Dorothy Vernon, his wife. Certain liberties are taken with biographical and historical data, and a goodly number of exciting adventures are invented to postpone the inevitable end through the requisite number of pages. Dorothy is shown as the most resourceful of young women, one who by lies, disguise, and other subterfuges succeeds in hoodwinking an obstinate, but affectionate parent so that she is able to marry the son of that parent's arch-enemy. Intrigues on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, form a part of the romance, the whole course of which passes within the neighbourhood of Haddon Hall and Rutland. The story is not without anachronisms and Americanisms. Dorothy had a mare named Dolcy— " 'The two D's, we call them. But Dorothy says we must be careful not to put a—a dash between them,' she said with a laugh and a blush." Surely a most strikingly Elizabethan jest! —The Athenaeum