The Lady and the Poet
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- 4,99 €
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- 4,99 €
Descripción editorial
Ann More and her four sisters have been brought up in the beautiful country house of Loseley, near Guildford in Surrey, by their grandparents, Sir William and the Lady Margaret More. Their only brother, Robert, lives with his pompous father and shrewish step-mother nearby. But though the sisters are close, it is Ann who is the most unusual in character. Wilful, argumentative, challenging and fiery, she is handsome rather than beautiful, and has an indomitable spirit. It is this that endears her to her grandfather, who encourages her learning and lets her loose in his well-stocked library to browse the volumes of Latin and Greek.
Once her favourite sister Bett is married, Ann is sent to live in York House in London, where her uncle is Lord Keeper of the Seal. Ann knows her father is endeavouring to find her a match in marriage, and she is to be presented at the Court of Queen Elizabeth yet the journey past Nonsuch Palace, through Southwark, the city gates spiked with the heads of recent traitors and across the shining river proves unimaginably exciting. Soon, Ann is quite at home at York House, and there, in the company of her young cousin, she meets the poet John Donne, a man older and wiser than her, whose verse and character she just cannot resist.
Rich in period detail, vivid in description and character, THE LADY AND THE POET is an utterly irresistible, compelling historical novel. It is, above all, the passionate story of the love match between one of the most famous poets of all time, and his young bride.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The unlikely yet enduring love between Jacobean poet John Donne and Ann More inspires British writer Haran (Having It All) for her first historical novel. More was a teenager when she met Donne, already an established poet and libertine. The Catholic Donne was an undesirable suitor, and Ann, the well-educated daughter of Surrey nobility, was expected to follow her sisters into an arranged marriage. Little is known about More, which allows for flights of imagination woven into the historical record: inopportune encounters across London, secret letters, a dangerous solo moonlit ride on horseback. Donne's poetry appears throughout the narrative, but there is nothing metaphysical about the couple's passion. Ann risks scandal, poverty and her father's wrath to be with Donne. Haran shows the challenges of being a woman at the turn of the 17th century, doing a creditable job of bringing history to life by creating a portrait of the renowned poet and a matching fictional portrait of the woman whom, according to history and literature, he deeply loved.
