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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'Sir Mortimer,' Mary Johnston weaves a captivating historical narrative set against the backdrop of the early 17th century. The novel showcases her deft command of rich, descriptive prose, combined with an intricate plot that unfolds through the eyes of its titular character. Johnston's meticulously researched historical context enhances the authenticity of the story, as it navigates themes of loyalty, honor, and the turbulent political landscapes of the time, setting this work apart from her contemporaries in the genre of historical fiction. Mary Johnston, an eminent American novelist born in 1870, emerged as a prominent figure during the early 20th century, known for her commitment to illuminating the complexities of American history and women's roles within it. Her own experiences with the turbulent socio-political issues of her time, including the suffrage movement, deeply informed her character development and narrative choices in 'Sir Mortimer,' infusing the tale with a sense of realism and emotional depth. 'Engaging and thought-provoking, 'Sir Mortimer' is highly recommended for readers who appreciate historical fiction interwoven with rich character development and the exploration of moral dilemmas. Johnston's evocative storytelling not only entertains but also invites reflection on the historical forces that shape individual destinies, making this novel a timeless addition to the genre. 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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Sir Mortimer
Table of Contents
Introduction
In Mary Johnston’s Sir Mortimer, an English gentleman and sea captain tests the boundaries of honor and ambition on restless oceans and in watchful courts, learning that courage in battle is only the beginning of a perilous reckoning with conscience, loyalty, and love, as shifting winds of empire, the rival claims of friendship and duty, and the lure of renown compel him to chart a course where victory can wound as deeply as defeat, and where the fiercest storm rises within, demanding a truer measure of valor than steel, sail, or royal favor can ever safely supply.
Sir Mortimer is a historical novel of adventure and romance set in the late sixteenth century, amid the maritime rivalry of England and Spain during the reign of Elizabeth I. Mary Johnston, an American novelist widely read in the early twentieth century, published the book in that period, extending her interest in richly imagined past worlds. The story moves between the English court and the high seas, where privateering, diplomacy, and peril intersect. Readers encounter a carefully evoked age of sail, chivalric ceremony, and shifting alliances, with attention to the public theatre of power as well as the everyday labor that keeps ships and kingdoms afloat.
Without revealing its turns, the premise follows the eponymous knight and sea captain as he undertakes crown sanctioned ventures and navigates the perils of favor, rivalry, and reputation. The opening establishes his standing among comrades and patrons, his skill as a leader, and the fragile margins between lawful enterprise and piracy. Early scenes sketch embarkation, coastal watchfulness, and the tensions that accompany letters of marque in contested waters. The book promises encounters on deck and in council chambers, where words can be as decisive as cannon, and where the fortunes of ships, crews, and households pivot on the choices of a single conscience.
Johnston shapes this material with a voice that blends vigor and ceremony, favoring cadence and texture that echo the period without drowning clarity. Descriptions of sails, harbors, and weather mingle with the language of courtesy, oath, and service, giving physical and moral weight to each decision. Action sequences are vivid yet not gratuitous, framed by moments of quiet scrutiny in which motive, honor, and fear are weighed. The prevailing mood is earnest and questing rather than cynical, but the narrative allows shadows to fall across triumph, suggesting costs that uniforms and pageantry cannot hide. The result is immersive, measured, and stirring.
At its heart, the novel probes codes of honor and the pressure they exert when tested by necessity. It considers loyalty to crown, comrades, and beloved, and the friction that arises when these bonds pull in different directions. The line between patriot and brigand is traced across ledgers, charters, and human lives, inviting reflection on the moral price of sanctioned violence. Ambition and renown gleam as prizes, yet the book repeatedly asks what they purchase and what they forfeit. Faith, fortune, and fate hover at the margins, not as abstractions but as forces that tilt decisions and deepen their consequences.
These preoccupations resonate today because the novel dramatizes how empires narrate themselves and how individuals live within those narratives. Readers may hear in its conflicts questions about national identity, propaganda, and the seductions of celebrity heroism. The privateer’s legal cloak, designed to legitimize predation, invites comparisons to modern delegations of force and the shifting language of authorization. Leadership, too, is examined in crises where command requires both resolve and restraint. In foregrounding conscience amid spectacle, the book offers a lens for thinking about power, complicity, and repair, without collapsing the past into the present or excusing the injuries it depicts.
For contemporary audiences, Sir Mortimer offers a classic seafaring and courtly journey crafted with deliberation and care, suited to readers who value historical atmosphere, moral inquiry, and finely tooled prose as much as swordplay. Those new to Johnston may find it helpful to lean into the rhythms of her diction, which reward patience with richness and pace. Admirers of maritime epics, Tudor dramas, and character driven adventures will recognize familiar pleasures, renewed here by ethical focus. Entering at the level of premise rather than outcome preserves discovery, allowing the voyage to unfold as intended and inviting reflection on the bearings we choose.
Synopsis
Mary Johnston’s Sir Mortimer is a historical adventure set in the late Elizabethan era, where sea power, courtly favor, and national rivalry shape destiny. The novel follows Sir Mortimer, an English knight and seasoned captain notable for courage and courtesy, as he moves between London’s gilded chambers and the perilous Atlantic. Tasked with serving queen and country, he balances ambition with conscience. The opening establishes his reputation, introduces the court’s intricate expectations, and hints at a restrained romantic attachment that complicates duty. The stage is set for a voyage that tests leadership, ideals, and loyalty amid the turbulent contest with Spain on the world’s oceans.
Sir Mortimer assembles a small squadron under legal sanction to harry enemy commerce and strengthen England’s purse and prestige. Crews are recruited from seasoned mariners and restless adventurers, each bringing skill and volatility. A rival English captain, bold but pragmatic, becomes both ally and foil, mirroring competing codes of conduct at sea. Farewells at court underscore the cost of departure and the scrutiny of patrons who expect profit without scandal. With charts, letters, and cautious blessings secured, the expedition slips down the Thames, its objectives clear yet complicated by private motives, shifting loyalties, and the knowledge that triumph and disgrace often hinge on a single shot or storm.
The outward passage reveals the discipline and endurance required of command. Johnston depicts routine and danger: gales that test rigging, sickness quelled by practical remedies, and watchfulness at the horizon. The crews’ differing tempers—some clamoring for prize, others steady in obedience—press Sir Mortimer to enforce a principled order. A first skirmish with a Spanish patrol yields a modest capture and raises questions about ransoms, spoils, and mercy. Tensions simmer as the rival captain advocates harsher measures. Sir Mortimer’s measured choices keep the venture lawful and morale intact, but the simplicity of letters of marque gives way to grayer choices as the squadron nears the Spanish Main.
The English descend upon a fortified harbor and outlying shipping, confronting the practical and moral calculus of private war. Negotiation, bombardment, and a cautious landing follow in swift sequence. Prisoners taken include a Spanish gentleman whose dignity prompts exchanges about honor across enemy lines. Sir Mortimer’s insistence on restraint clashes with those who see leniency as weakness. As spoils are divided, the rival captain’s popularity surges, and whispers of softness dog Sir Mortimer. The episode yields treasure and reputational risk in equal measure, with hints of a betrayal not yet provable. The ships depart heavier with plunder, lighter in unity, and headed toward more treacherous waters.
A violent storm scatters the squadron and leaves Sir Mortimer to reckon with damage, shortage, and isolation. Patching sails and rationing stores, he seeks a precarious refuge where English, Spanish, and local interests collide. There, emissaries bargain over pilots, supplies, and safe passage, and the temptation of easy wealth threatens discipline. Sir Mortimer chooses commitments over gain, protecting dependents and honoring parole in ways that win quiet respect and stir resentment. News of Spanish concentrations forces hard decisions about rendezvous and retreat. The chapter’s focus remains on leadership under strain, with the rival’s whereabouts uncertain and the expedition’s fortunes now tied as much to prudence as to daring.
An ambush along a contested coast reverses momentum. Captured and examined by Spanish authorities, Sir Mortimer confronts the theological, legal, and political justifications of empire. Johnston stages measured dialogues between adversaries who recognize one another’s courage while refusing one another’s cause. Assistance comes from an unexpected direction, bound by debt and mutual esteem, enabling a perilous bid for liberty. The escape, costly and incomplete, alters the balance among the English when scattered ships rejoin. Messages from England speak of diplomatic shifts and changing winds at court, compressing the time in which profit, proof, and propriety must be delivered if reputations—and futures—are to survive the return home.
The homeward run is marked by lean casks, weary men, and the risk of mutiny fanned by grievance and rumor. Sir Mortimer restores order through a blend of fairness and resolve, promising a reckoning of accounts once London is made. Landfall brings ceremony and contention: auditors assess prizes, courtiers weigh policy against public appetite for glory, and rivals advance their narratives. Whispered accusations threaten to recast valor as overreach. The personal strand resumes as obligations of birth, favor, and feeling collide, and the question of whom to trust takes on new urgency. The expedition’s ledger shows gains, but the standing of its leader remains precariously balanced.
A final sequence of confrontations—at sea and ashore—forces decisions that define character and consequence. Evidence of betrayal surfaces, pitting chivalric ideal against expedient survival. The rival captain’s path intersects with Sir Mortimer’s in a reckoning that tests loyalty, courage, and the limits of pardon. Political fortunes at court tilt, and alliances shift in a breath. The romantic thread tightens under the weight of reputation and duty, its outcome shaped by truths newly revealed. Johnston orchestrates action and pause, allowing choices to reverberate through crews, captains, and patrons alike. Without resolving all fates on the page, the novel crests on acts that cannot be recalled or disguised.
Sir Mortimer closes by emphasizing the cost and necessity of principle in an age of expanding horizons and mutable policy. The sea serves as crucible, exposing vanity, cruelty, patience, and honor within the same decks. Johnston’s narrative suggests that victory without measure corrodes, while measured loss can confer a different kind of triumph. The protagonist’s effort to reconcile gallantry with statecraft speaks to a nation learning to wield power without abandoning its ideals. The story ends with a tempered sense of possibility, affirming service and integrity while acknowledging what they demand. In its final notes, the book leaves readers with the enduring tension between success, conscience, and time.
Historical Context
Set in the last decades of the sixteenth century, the novel unfolds amid England’s maritime expansion under Queen Elizabeth I and the volatile contest with Habsburg Spain. Ports such as Plymouth and London’s riverside wharves, the English Channel, and the Spanish Main form the principal geographical frame, while the royal court provides a political backdrop of patronage, rivalry, and favor. The time is marked by privateering commissions, Protestant statecraft, and the emergence of England as a naval power. Mary Johnston situates her protagonist within this world of sanctioned sea raiding, court intrigues, and perilous voyages, evoking a transitional era that bridges medieval chivalric codes and modern imperial ambitions.
The Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) provides the central historical canvas. Triggered by religious antagonism, English support for the Dutch Revolt, and competition over New World wealth, the conflict legitimized English privateering through letters of marque, turning captains into instruments of policy. Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins carried the fight to the Caribbean, attacking ports like Santo Domingo (1586) and Cartagena (1586), while English fleets disrupted Iberian shipping lanes. The war fused commerce and combat, and it cultivated a professional seafaring culture around Plymouth and other ports. Johnston’s narrative, with its gentleman-adventurer navigating both deck and audience chamber, mirrors this fusion: a world in which plunder, policy, and personal honor intersect, with every voyage both venture and diplomatic gesture.
The Spanish Armada campaign of 1588 anchors the maritime mythos of the age. King Philip II dispatched about 130 ships under the Duke of Medina Sidonia to escort Parma’s army from Flanders for an invasion of England. Opposed by Lord Charles Howard of Effingham and vice admiral Francis Drake, the English used fireships at Calais, shattered Spanish formations at Gravelines (29 July–8 August 1588, new style), and relied on the windward advantage of weatherly galleons. Storms in the North Atlantic compounded Spanish losses on the retreat around Scotland and Ireland. The victory nourished an enduring ethos of providential deliverance and seamanship. Johnston’s world of seasoned captains, battered hulls, and vigilant coasts is steeped in this legacy of national survival and oceanic prowess.
Privateering’s economic logic, aimed at Spain’s transatlantic treasure system, also shaped the era. English ventures targeted the annual flotas carrying silver from Potosí via Nombre de Dios and Veracruz, as well as richly loaded Portuguese carracks traveling from Goa and Malacca. A defining windfall came with the capture of the Portuguese Madre de Deus off the Azores in 1592 by an English squadron associated with Walter Raleigh and commanded at sea by Sir John Burgh; its cargo of spices, gems, and dyes was valued in contemporary accounts at hundreds of thousands of pounds. Johnston’s tale of temptation, discipline, and contested spoils reflects the moral and social frictions that arose when sudden wealth washed into coastal towns and courtly ante-chambers.
The Roanoke ventures (1584–1587), sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh, exemplified the Elizabethan drive to plant colonies. Expeditions under Sir Richard Grenville and Governor John White established precarious settlements on Roanoke Island, in present-day North Carolina. The 1587 colony vanished by 1590, leaving the word Croatoan as a trace and inaugurating the mystery of the Lost Colony. These efforts linked martial seamanship to imperial vision and created the toponym Virginia in honor of the queen. Johnston, a Virginian author steeped in Atlantic history, projects this horizon of colonization into her seafaring milieu, where exploration, supply, and settlement are not abstractions but tangible pressures upon sailors, patrons, and the Crown.
Elizabethan court politics and patronage decisively regulated maritime enterprise. Great officers and favorites such as the Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Earl of Essex controlled licenses, monopolies, and access to the queen. The Essex rebellion of February 1601 exposed the instability at the heart of a system built on favor, credit, and military glory, and it resulted in Essex’s execution. Naval expeditions, prize adjudications in the High Court of Admiralty, and the distribution of booty all turned on courtly alliances. Johnston’s protagonist moves within this matrix, where knighthood, command, and survival depend upon careful navigation of factional currents no less treacherous than Biscay gales.
The succession of James VI and I in 1603 and the Treaty of London in 1604 ended open war with Spain and curtailed privateering. Peace redirected English energies toward regulated trade through chartered companies, including the East India Company (1600) and, soon, the Virginia Company (1606), while religious tensions persisted, as dramatized by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Former wartime practices fell under legal scrutiny, and the rhetoric of chivalric raiding gave way to mercantile calculation. In Johnston’s world, this shift tests the maritime gentleman’s identity: a code forged in combat confronts peacetime accountability, and men accustomed to letters of marque must answer to new statutes, shareholders, and auditors.
As social and political critique, the book interrogates the moral costs of empire and the hierarchy that glorified plunder when it served policy yet punished it when fashion changed. It exposes inequities between captains and common seamen, the exploitation hidden in prize-taking, and the precarity of reputation under a courtier’s smile. By staging Protestant–Catholic antagonisms and the rhetoric of national destiny beside scenes of sacked ports and dispossessed peoples, it questions triumphal narratives. The work thus reveals how honor codes, class privilege, and state sanction masked systemic violence, urging readers to weigh patriotic legend against the lived burdens of sailors, subjects, and colonial frontiers.
