Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Paperback 801: Morgan's Daughter / H.G. de Lisser (Ernest Benn Ltd (UK) nn)

Paperback 801: Ernest Benn Ltd (UK) nn (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Morgan's Daughter
Author: H.G. de Lisser
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $16

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Best things about this cover:

  • "Remove the ascot at once, or you will force me to make use of what appears to be an awfully anachronistic-looking handgun … sir."
  • I hope this is a bodice-ripper, 'cause she's certainly ready.
  • He has double fear hand! Or else "Air Keyboard Hands."
  • I wanted this to be Morgan le Fay's daughter, but no.
  • I picked this up in Owego a couple weeks ago, during an impromptu trip to a bookstore basement. Nothing Great, but plenty of Good.


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Best things about this back cover:

  • "Complacency returned"! Phew! Slavery was really rough for white people.
  • The name "Three-fingered Jack" is making me thirsty for whiskey.
  • Oh … *Captain* Morgan is her dad. I just got that. Now I want rum.
  • With such awkward punctuation and grammar, what might not be the meaning of that last question?
  • Wait, she became the "mistress" of *all* the slaves (and maroons!)? What might not be possible?


NOTE: Maroon
n.
1. often Maroon
a. A fugitive Black slave in the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries.
b. A descendant of such a slave.
2. A person who is marooned, as on an island.

Page 123~

Captain Thornton was a man of action. And now he was a soldier attending to his duty. He swung himself off his horse and his men followed his example. So did Cudjoe.

I wish I could tell you Cudjoe was a man-eating Saint Bernard. I really do.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. Should be back to a roughly 3x/week posting schedule now, for the foreseeable future.

4 comments:

Patrick Murtha said...

de Lisser (1878-1944) is an important figure in the history of Caribbean and Jamaican literature, and a pioneering black author. He wrote ten novels (and three other books), four of which (including this one) appeared in book form only after his death, although they had run in periodical installments during his lifetime.

Random White Guy said...

She's not even looking at Ascot Andy. He could easily disarm her with his Fear Hands.

DemetriosX said...

1870? That's got to be a typo. Slavery was outlawed in all British possessions in the 1830s. For that matter, the famous Captain Morgan would have been dead for almost 200 years.

John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur said...

If she was actually Henry Morgan's daughter, she looked pretty good for her age considering daddy died in 1688. That's a long time for that bosom to be heaving. And slavery was abolished in British colonies in 1834. So that handgun wasn't the only anachronism. I'm not one who demands obsessive attention to detail in my historical fiction, but it'd be nice if they got it right within a couple of centuries.