The White Cliffs
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Alice Duer Miller's heart-warming novel written entirely in verse. The narrative follows an American girl who falls in love with an Englishman during World War I. This touching and beautiful tale will appeal to lovers of poetry and those with an interest in life during the Great War, and it is not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard-to-come-by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
Customer Reviews
The great American verse novel
Verse novels are rare (Coventry Patmore sometimes seems to have the field to himself), and American verse novels are even rarer, but 60 years ago, one jumped onto the best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. It deserved to. This tale of a young American woman who marries a young Englishman of the upper classes, then sees him die in WW1, and has to raise his son to succeed him, even as another war comes closer, taught a lot about England (and, to a lesser degree, Scotland) to Americans, and taught many English how to better understand Americans. War propaganda? Yes, perhaps, but beautifully told. In 1944 it was made in to the successful movie, “The White Cliffs of Dover”, with Irene Dunne, but the movie lacks, as it must, the fine observation, the “two inches of ivory” of the original. Read it as an example of what poetry can do; high-school English probably didn’t give you a clue.