The Lavender Dragon

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Sir Jasper de Pomeroy, a solemn knight with a taste for honor but little sense of irony, rides into the marshland village of Pongley with his worldly squire, George Pipkin, and at last finds the adventure he has long been seeking. The villagers, led by the Portreeve Jacob Pratt, beg his aid against the Lavender Dragon, a huge, beautiful, and unnervingly intelligent monster that has been abducting lonely folk, widows, orphans, and children from the countryside. Jasper vows to face the beast, while George, practical to the bone, prepares the weapons and warns that the dragon is most dangerous at dusk. Tracking the creature through the Woods of Blore to the Red Rocks, the pair discover not a brute but a courteous philosopher who insists on fair play, reason, and equal conditions for battle. Before any duel can begin, the dragon launches into a surprising defense of himself and of Dragonsville, his deliberate social experiment for lonely and discontented people, especially children, built on self-reliance, patience, mutual usefulness, and hope joined to action. As Jasper wrestles with the dragon's logic and George suspects trickery, the story balances medieval quest, sharp satire, and an unsettlingly humane debate about honor, progress, and the meaning of a better life.