The cover page is adapted from A Landscape with a Horseman, a painting completed circa 1850 by John Middleton. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Middleton_(Norfolk_artist)www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
The Splendid Spur
Chapters (21)
- Dedication 0:00
- I: The Bowling-Green of the Crown 1:06
- II: The Young Man in the Cloak of Amber Satin 16:20
- III: I Find Myself in a Tavern Brawl: And Barely Escape 30:40
- IV: I Take the Road 55:49
- V: My Adventure at the Three Cups 1:19:51
- VI: The Flight in the Pine Wood 1:44:41
- VII: I Find a Comrade 2:04:19
- VIII: I Lose the King’s Letter; and Am Carried to Bristol 2:24:00
- IX: I Break Out of Prison 2:49:33
- X: Captain Pottery and Captain Settle 3:32:47
- XI: I Ride Down Into Temple: And Am Well Treated There 3:57:30
- XII: How Joan Saved the Army of the West; and Saw the Fight on Braddock Down 4:16:17
- XIII: I Buy a Looking Glass at Bodmin Fair: And Meet with Mr. Hannibal Tingcomb 4:35:18
- XIV: I Do No Good in the House of Gleys 4:52:03
- XV: I Leave Joan and Ride to the Wars 5:09:28
- XVI: The Battle of Stamford Heath 5:25:44
- XVII: I Meet with a Happy Adventure by Burning of a Green Light 5:49:19
- XVIII: Joan Does Me Her Last Service 6:17:22
- XIX: The Adventure of the Hearse 6:43:28
- XX: The Adventure of the Ledge; and How I Shook Hands with My Comrade 7:09:05
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Jack Marvel is a student in Oxford late in 1642 as tensions are growing between Royalists and Parliamentarians. He happens to observe a clandestine encounter, and what he overhears, he soon shares with Anthony Killigrew, as it concerns a plot on Killigrew’s life. Killigrew, it turns out, is carrying a letter for the king. But Killigrew is killed, and Jack takes up the letter in his friend’s place. His road to Cornwall is beset with danger, and in spite of falling in with Killigrew’s sister—the beautiful Delia—Jack’s commission is ever in peril.
There is a hint of the picaresque in this dramatic first-person narrative, as Marvel is never far from danger, and emerges only narrowly from many scrapes. This was a prominenet element of the popular historical fiction of the late 19th century. Arthur Quiller-Couch self-consciously stood in the tradition which ran from Sir Walter Scott to Robert Louis Stevenson. In the case of The Splendid Spur, this brings with it not only historical accuracy, but scenes of dramatic and romantic tension, all acted out on an evocatively drawn landscape.