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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Phroso," Anthony Hope weaves a gripping narrative that combines elements of adventure, romance, and political intrigue. Set against the backdrop of a fictional Balkan kingdom, the story follows the protagonist, a resourceful and charming hero, as he navigates treachery and moral dilemmas. Hope's literary style is characterized by sharp dialogue and vibrant characterizations, which craft a tale reminiscent of the popular adventure novels of the late 19th century. This work reflects the zeitgeist of its time, capturing the allure of exotic settings and the challenges of imperialism, engaging readers in a multifaceted exploration of bravery and love in tumultuous times. Anthony Hope, born in 1863, emerged as a prominent figure in English literature during the late Victorian era, largely known for his contributions to the adventure genre. His experiences with the theater and journalism imbued his writing with a lively dynamism and an inherent sense of pacing and dramatic tension. "Phroso" allows Hope to explore themes of identity and loyalty, drawing upon the socio-political climate of his era, which was marked by shifting national borders and the romanticism of foreign lands. Readers seeking an enthralling tale that deftly intertwines adventure with profound moral questions will find "Phroso" a captivating choice. Hope's intricate plot and well-developed characters invite exploration of both personal sacrifice and the complexities of human relationships against a backdrop of geopolitical turmoil. This novel stands as a testament to Hope's literary prowess and remains a compelling read for those interested in classic adventure narratives. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Phroso
Table of Contents
Introduction
A bold foray into unfamiliar territory becomes a crucible where power, allegiance, and desire are tested, drawing strangers and natives into a perilous dance that weighs personal honor against the hard demands of ambition and survival.
Phroso by Anthony Hope belongs to the tradition of late Victorian adventure romance, written in the energetic years after his breakthrough with widely read swashbuckling fiction. Appearing in the late 1890s, it reflects a moment when English popular novels embraced swift pacing, exotic horizons, and moral dilemmas sharpened by political tension. Readers encounter a world set at some distance from Britain, a terrain where outward civility and inward calculation meet. Without relying on historical grandstanding, the book builds its atmosphere from the conventions of its era: daring initiatives, codes of conduct under strain, and the suspense of choices made under pressure.
The premise is clean and compelling: an outsider, intent on a decisive enterprise, enters a tightly knit community whose loyalties, customs, and leadership are neither simple nor easily swayed. Early movements of the plot hinge on negotiation, contested authority, and the magnetic presence signaled by the book’s title, as private motives intersect with communal expectations. The narrative invites readers to watch stakes escalate—first in whispered bargains, then in open confrontations—while keeping its cards close enough to preserve surprise. From the outset, the promise of romance is entangled with the perils of political calculation and the uncertainties of trust.
Hope’s narrative voice is polished yet brisk, favoring clear momentum over elaborate ornament while retaining the light irony that keeps peril from turning ponderous. Scenes often pivot quickly from conversation to action, using shifts in vantage and pace to sustain tension. The style suits readers who enjoy elegance under stress: sentences that move, dialogue that hints more than it declares, and set pieces that balance spectacle with strategy. The book’s mood alternates between bright confidence and encroaching danger, and the resulting rhythm—poise tipped toward risk—creates an experience that feels both engagingly theatrical and emotionally immediate.
Beneath its adventures, the novel probes questions that remain durable: What legitimizes power—purchase, lineage, consent, or courage? How far should personal loyalty bend before it breaks under public duty? The romance is not merely decorative; desire and affection sharpen the conflicts of authority and belonging. Hope explores the friction between law and custom, promise and practicality, aspiration and responsibility. Borders—geographic, cultural, and moral—define the arena, while identity is tested at those margins. The figure of Phroso focuses these tensions, embodying the human costs and possibilities that emerge when private commitments collide with the hard claims of rule.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its depiction of cross-cultural encounter without dissolving complexity into caricature. It asks how one earns trust from those who owe nothing to outsiders, how leadership balances decisiveness with restraint, and what compromises feel justifiable when every option carries risk. Its intrigue is intimate rather than bureaucratic, foregrounding the ethics of promise-keeping and the price of victory. Readers who appreciate atmosphere, strategy, and morally freighted romance will find an adventure that entertains while inviting reflection on entitlement, consent, and the delicate art of negotiating shared futures.
Approached as a standalone romance of action, Phroso offers the satisfactions associated with Anthony Hope’s name: quickening jeopardy, crisp turns, and a civilized wit that never loses sight of consequence. It complements his more famous work by shifting the emphasis from courtly spectacle to the granular mechanics of influence—how words, gestures, and small choices can redirect the fate of a place. The result is an engrossing journey that rewards both momentum-driven reading and thoughtful pause, a tale that marries urgent plot with questions that echo beyond its pages, and a reminder of why late nineteenth-century adventure fiction retains its enduring allure.
Synopsis
Phroso by Anthony Hope is an adventure romance set in the late Ottoman Aegean, following a young English peer, Lord Wheatley, who buys the small island of Neopalia. Drawn by curiosity as much as by law and money, he expects a picturesque retreat secured by a formal deed. He sails with a handful of English companions, confident that the imperial authorities have sanctioned the sale. From the outset, rumors hint that the islanders will not accept foreign rule. Hope builds the premise around a clash of contract and custom, as Wheatley approaches a community whose identity and inheritance rest on an unbroken local tradition.
As Wheatley’s yacht reaches Neopalia, resistance becomes immediate and physical. The islanders crowd the quay, stones fly, and the visitors are driven into a perilous landing that scatters men and supplies. The new owner finds himself holding a legal document that no one on shore recognizes as binding. Paths to the interior are controlled, and the native castle dominates the cliffs above a narrow harbor. Cut off and under threat, Wheatley chooses negotiation first, seeking to meet the leaders and explain his rights. The opening conflict establishes the island’s fierce cohesion and the precariousness of any change imposed from outside.
In the midst of this standoff, Wheatley encounters Phroso, short for Euphrosyne, a young woman tied to Neopalia’s ruling family. Her presence connects the island’s past to its present, and her words convey why the sale feels like dispossession. She neither welcomes nor wholly rejects the newcomer, but insists that obligations to the island and its church are not transferable. Through Phroso, Wheatley learns of oaths, dowries, and a hereditary claim that the people regard as sacred. Their cautious exchanges create a narrow channel for dialogue amid hostility, while the looming fortress, village council, and armed clans restate the balance of power.
Opposition quickly crystallizes around Constantine Stefanopoulos, a kinsman of Phroso and the strongest native claimant to authority. He frames Wheatley’s purchase as an affront and speaks for those who will fight to preserve autonomy. Constantine also seeks to bind the island’s future by marriage, aiming to secure Phroso within an alliance that would end debate by custom rather than by law. Wheatley, outnumbered but determined, refuses to surrender his title. After failed parleys and a show of force, he withdraws with his small party to a defensible position near the castle, preparing for a siege while still urging a lawful settlement.
Days of tension follow, with raids, barricades, and wary truces. Wheatley relies on ingenuity, the terrain, and limited firearms to hold off attacks. He courts the neutrality of some islanders and keeps open a path to water and the shore. Phroso moves between camps under constraint, sometimes as messenger, sometimes as hostage, her safety shaping decisions on both sides. As pressure mounts, talk of ancient privileges and the island’s patron saint competes with the language of deeds and signatures. The stalemate tests endurance, and small shifts in allegiance suggest that neither force nor parchment alone will decide Neopalia’s fate.
The impasse draws the attention of Mouraki Pasha, the Ottoman governor whose jurisdiction includes Neopalia. Arriving by sea with soldiers and formal authority, he brings a ledger, a smile, and the means to compel obedience. Mouraki acknowledges Wheatley’s purchase yet insists on public order and imperial interests. He interviews elders, weighs the island’s charter against the bill of sale, and makes temporary arrests to cool passions. His presence changes the calculus, introducing a political game in which recognition, taxes, and personal favor matter as much as ancestral sentiment. Yet he leaves the core dispute unresolved, pending conduct and compliance.
With external authority watching, intrigue deepens under cover of night. Secret agreements and private revenges unsettle both camps. A daring attempt to seize leverage centers on Phroso herself, whose status can legitimize rule by custom if controlled. Hidden paths through the cliffs, a sea cave, and an isolated chapel become the settings for escapes and confrontations. Along the way, a document and a family revelation emerge that recast claims to Neopalia in unexpected terms. Hope stages these turns as discoveries rather than lectures, steering the conflict from open battle to a contest of proof, guardianship, and competing notions of honor.
The narrative rises to a decisive confrontation where islanders, the English party, and the Pasha’s men converge. Storm and stone, oath and order, all bear on a few irreversible choices. Wheatley must weigh strict right against the safety of those who have followed him. Constantine faces the cost of victory without consent. Phroso, central to every argument, acts within the narrow space allowed her, influencing the outcome by what she accepts and refuses. The turning point resolves the immediate struggle over custody, allegiance, and leadership, while preserving the secrecy of the final arrangements that determine Neopalia’s future.
In its closing chapters, Phroso gathers the personal and political threads into a settlement that sets boundaries for power, possession, and affection. The story leaves the impression that durable rule rests on legitimacy recognized by the ruled as well as sanctioned by law. Wheatley emerges with a clearer sense of responsibility toward people, not just property, and the island’s identity remains shaped by its own traditions. Phroso’s agency is affirmed within the constraints of her time, and the broader Aegean world continues beyond the last page. The novel’s essence is the negotiation between paper rights and living custom.
Historical Context
Anthony Hope situates Phroso in the late 1890s eastern Mediterranean, on a small Greek-speaking island under nominal Ottoman sovereignty in the Aegean Archipelago. Such islands, particularly in the Dodecanese and around the Sanjak of the Archipelago (centered at Rhodes), were administered by Ottoman officials yet dominated by local notables and clan alliances. Steamship routes linked Piraeus, Smyrna, and Rhodes; telegraph lines and consular networks brought the Great Powers close to village life. Olive culture, sponge diving, and cabotage sustained economies, while honor norms and blood feuds governed social order. Into this environment steps an English aristocrat traveler, protected by a British passport and consul, whose purchase of land confronts Ottoman law, Greek custom, and simmering nationalist resentment.
The Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) reshaped the Aegean. Insurrections in the Peloponnese and islands like Hydra and Spetses, the massacre at Chios in 1822, and decisive naval warfare culminated in the allied victory at Navarino (20 October 1827), where British, French, and Russian fleets destroyed the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet. The Protocol of London (1830) recognized an independent Hellenic Kingdom, while many islands, including the Dodecanese and Crete, remained under the Sultan. This incomplete settlement left communities divided between a Greek state and Ottoman rule. Phroso mirrors the long memory of that conflict: Greek islanders under Ottoman sovereignty carry grievances and hopes formed in the 1820s, informing their reactions to Turkish officials and to foreign interlopers.
Nineteenth-century Greek nationalism crystallized as the Megali Idea, articulated by Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis in 1844, envisioning the union of all Greek-populated lands with the kingdom. Stepwise expansion fed this program: Britain transferred the Ionian Islands in 1864; the Porte ceded Thessaly and part of Epirus (Arta) in 1881 after post–Berlin Treaty diplomacy. Irredentist aspirations focused on Crete, Macedonia, and Aegean islands still under the Sultan. Newspapers, urban societies, and diaspora merchants sustained this agenda across the Mediterranean. In Phroso, villagers’ suspicion of Ottoman authority and their guarded welcome to a British buyer echo such activism: the island community weighs legal documents against the nationalist conviction that sovereignty must rest with the ethnos and local consent.
The Cretan Revolt of 1896–1897, the culmination of decades of unrest after the great rising of 1866–1869, drew the Great Powers directly into Aegean affairs. Communal violence between Christians and Muslims on Crete and clashes with Ottoman troops prompted Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany to dispatch an International Squadron, impose blockades, and bombard insurgent positions to prevent a wider war. In early 1897 Greek volunteers and forces attempted intervention, provoking an international crisis. By 1898 the Powers created the autonomous Cretan State under High Commissioner Prince George of Greece, with foreign garrisons enforcing order. Phroso reflects the same charged maritime environment: patrols, competing flags, and the precariousness of island life shaped by sudden interventions and shifting authority between local leaders, the Porte, and European admirals.
The Greco–Turkish War of 1897, fought from April to May, erupted from border incidents in Thessaly and the Cretan question. Ottoman forces under Edhem Pasha defeated Greek armies led by Crown Prince Constantine at Velestino (15–18 April), Pharsala (5 May), and Domokos (17 May), forcing a Greek retreat to the Thermopylae line. The Treaty of Constantinople (4 December 1897) imposed a heavy indemnity on Greece, minor frontier rectifications, and international financial control in 1898. Great Power mediation spared Athens harsher terms, yet confirmed Ottoman military resilience under Sultan Abdülhamid II. The war’s headlines coincided with Phroso’s composition, supplying the novel’s sense of exposed islands, nervous garrisons, and the possibility that force, rather than law, decides the fate of small communities and audacious foreigners.
Ottoman legal frameworks enabled foreign penetration even as sovereignty remained Ottoman. The Capitulations granted Europeans consular protection and jurisdictional privileges; the Anglo–Ottoman Commercial Convention of 1838 opened trade; the 1858 Land Code rationalized tenure; and a decree in 1867 permitted foreigners to own real estate, subject to Ottoman law and taxes. In the Archipelago, iltizam tax-farming and the influence of derebey notables coexisted with the governor’s writ from Rhodes. These arrangements facilitated transactions whereby a British subject could purchase extensive property, even an entire estate, and rely on consular intervention if challenged. Phroso dramatizes this collision: an English buyer armed with imperial paper confronts islanders whose customary rights and communal sovereignty are not captured by cadastral titles or consular seals.
British engagement with the Greek world was longstanding. The United States of the Ionian Islands was a British protectorate from 1815 to 1864, creating habits of administration, policing, and law that Britons expected to find respected nearby. Consuls in Smyrna, Constantinople, and Salonica guarded subjects’ interests, while the 1890s saw a boom in Mediterranean yachting and touring, from Royal Yacht Squadron cruises to Thomas Cook itineraries. Yet brigandage and hostage taking persisted, dramatized by the Dilessi murders near Marathon in 1870, which jolted Europe. Phroso captures this duality: the ease of elite mobility and the peril of entering regions where clan honor, not Admiralty charts, determines who may safely land and what a foreign name is worth.
By staging an aristocratic attempt to buy an island community, the novel offers a critique of late Victorian imperial confidence and the commodification of sovereignty. It exposes how paper legality, backed by consuls and treaties, can collide with lived rights, communal land, and obligations enforced through vendetta and patriarchal authority. Ottoman officials appear constrained by corruption and distance, while European interventions promise order yet deepen dependency. The narrative interrogates class privilege and gendered vulnerability through its heroine’s constrained choices amid male power. Phroso thus reads as a political parable of the 1890s eastern Mediterranean, indicting the arrogance of great states and wealthy travelers who presume that money, stamps, and flags can purchase legitimacy.
