The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance by Lucas Malet

Description

Denzil Calmady raises his stately red-brick house upon the southern verge of a great moorland plateau, and the foundations are barely down before the family story acquires the shape of a legend, love purchased with grief. By the time the history reaches the maimed and dazzling young baronet it names him for, the reader is thoroughly inside a world where a great house, a great name and a burned inheritance are all part of one intricate inheritance.

Richard has the head of a scholar and the temperament of a conqueror, and neither consoles him for the body the curse has taken. There are those who pity him and those who would keep him safely ornamental, and a woman whose feeling for him is more complicated than affection. The novel’s controversy, and its enduring pull, lies in how honestly it treats desire, duty and the insistence of a man who refuses to let his disability define the terms of his life.

Why it caused such a stir

• A frank, modern treatment of the body and of erotic love surprising for a novel of its year.
• Lush period prose and a slow, luxurious build toward an ending that scandalized and delighted in equal measure.
• A hero who is no mere sufferer but a vivid, sometimes difficult personality fully alive.

About This DodaBooks Edition

The complete 60 chapters are reset in clean, continuous type with a working index.