Winston Churchill (1871 - 1947), an American Historical Novelist from St. Louis

Perhaps the British own the copyright on the name Winston Churchill, but it was a young American writer from Missouri who first made the name Winston Churchill popular back in 1899.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 10 November 1871, American novelist, essayist and poet Winston Churchill was only 28 when he became an instant celebrity with the publication of his second book Richard Carvel, the dramatic tale of a young boy's adventures at sea during the Revolutionary War.

The book sold more than 2 million copies at a time when the population of the United States was less than 76 million.

Richard Carvel is set near Annapolis, Maryland, and Churchill became very familiar with the region while attending the U.S. Naval Academy between 1890 and 1894.

After college, young Winston moved to New York and worked briefly as the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine (1895).  His first novel, a romantic intrigue titled The Celebrity, appeared in 1897 to mild reviews.  Richard Carvel first appeared in 1899 and was still standing at No. 8 on the best-seller list throughout the year 1900.  It was soon followed by The Crisis (1901) and The Crossing (1904), a trilogy that made Churchill one of the most successful authors of pop history prior to World War I.

Churchill retired from writing in 1919, took up painting with watercolors, and published only once more, briefly, in 1940, with a book of religious philosophy titled The Unchartered Way.

He died in Winter Park, Florida, in 1947.

When Knighthood Was In Flower

By Charles Major (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1898)

Torn between two lovers, Princess Mary Tudor faces an impossible decision. As the younger sister to King Henry VIII of England, she is obligated to wed King Louis XII of France.  But she's lost her heart to Charles Brandon -- a dashing viscount who poses a threat to the King. 

Fans of the Showtime series The Tudors will certainly recognize this plot.  When Knighthood Was in Flower covers the same steamy romance between Mary and Charles Brandon found in the Tudors Season 2 and Season 3. But it's done in a much more Victorian manner -- minus the hot sex scenes in a rolling ship on the high seas.

Sometimes the Victorians got it right.  See, for example, the gorgeous 1902 photographs of the actress Julia Marlowe (above) who played Mary Tudor in Paul Kester's Broadway production of the book.

Originally published by Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1898, When Knighthood Was In Flower made its American author, Charles Major, an overnight celebrity, and by the year 1900 Knighthood was still topping the charts at No. 9, a tribute to its enormous success.

D.W. Griffith paid tribute to the writing prowess of Major by mounting the book as a major motion picture: When Knight's Were Bold (1908).  Griffith himself was cast as Brandon, opposite Linda Arvidson as Mary Tudor.

William Randolph Hearst gave the film a much more glamorous silent treament: When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922).  Marion Davies (Hearst's mistress) played Mary, but the boss had the wisdom not to cast himself as Brandon.  He pitched the role to Forrest Stanley.

The Walt Disney company shot When Knighthood Was in Flower in 1953 and renamed it The Sword and The Rose, starring Glynis Johns and Richard Todd.  The movie did not do justice to the book, and introduced many historical inaccuracies that would have horrified Charles Major, a careful scholar who spent many years researching the story of Mary Tudor in great detail.

Read The Book Online:

Read and Download the Marion Davies Edition for Free at Google Books.

Download the Book for Free at Project Gutenberg.

Read and Download Other Titles by Charles Major at OnRead 

Charles Major (1856 - 1913)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Biographical Sources

Johnson, Bryan.  "Charles Major: Father of the Historical Romance."
Shelbyville, Indiana / FunCityFinder.com

OnRead. "Major, Charles"

Project Gutenberg. "The Works of Charles Major"

Wikipedia. "Charles Major"

Alice of Old Vincennes

by Maurice Thompson, Illustrations by Frederick Coffay Yohn

A thrilling historical romance set on the eve of the Revolutionary War, the No. 10 bestseller of the year 1900 told the story of Alice Tarleton, a young lady who was abducted as a child by a French trader and reared among Indians at Vincennes, in the Wabash Valley of Indiana.

As patriot troops fight to capture Vincennes (1779), Alice falls in love with the dashing and aristocratic Lt. Beverley, one of the officers in the frontier campaign led by Gen. George Rogers Clark. 

Much of the colorful background material is based on historical fact, and described masterfully by Maurice Thompson, a lawyer, poet and woodsman from Indiana who took a keen interest in the state's little known role in the American Revolution.

Illustration (Above): Frederick Coffay Yohn.  Source: Wikimedia Commons

Read It Online

Read or Download Alice of Old Vincennes for free at Google Books

Read or Download Alice of Old Vincennes for free at OnRead

Read or Listen to Alice of Old Vincennes for free at OpenLibrary

Download Alice of Old Vincennes for free at Project Gutenberg

For historical images of Wabash Valley, Indiana (the setting of this novel) see the Wabash Valley Visions and Voices Digital Memory Project.

Maurice Thompson (1844 - 1901)

James Maurice Thompson was born September 9, 1844, in Fairfield, Indiana, the fifth child of Grigg Thompson, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Diantha Jagger. Around 1846 the family moved to Missouri and Kentucky, and then further south to the Cherokee Valley of north Georgia, where they settled near the town of Calhoun. 

Maurice received an education in classical literature, French and mathematics. His high school studies were soon interrupted by the Civil War.

Joining the Confederate Army just after his 18th birthday, the young Thompson served as a scout with the 63rd Regiment of Georgia Volunteers. His unit was assigned to garrison the coastal defense batteries at Thunderbolt and Rosedew Islands near Savannah.  As a scout, Maurice did a great deal of mountaineering, travelling with his unit through "the rugged, billowy region of North Georgia, North Alabama, and Eastern Tennessee."

Accustomed to camping in the field, Maurice Thompson became a life-long naturalist with a love for trail hiking, botany, ornithology and the legends of native tribes. He also became an expert hunter and archer.

After the war, Thompson returned to Calhoun, Georgia, where he studied surveying, civil engineering, and law. In 1867 he travelled to Florida, where he participated in a survey of Lake Okeechobee. At about this time he began his writing career.

In the late 1867, Maurice and his brother Will Henry Thompson moved back to Indiana, where they settled in the town of Crawfordsville.  They married sisters, the daughters of John Lee. Maurice married Alice Lee on 16 June 1868, and it was a happy union that lasted for life.

Thompson worked briefly as a railroad engineer, and he and his brother Will formed a law partnership in 1873.  Shortly thereafter, Maurice began to publish nature and archery essays in Appleton's Journal.  His big breakthrough arrived in the summer of 1877, when he published an essay on "Hunting with the Long Bow" in Harper's Monthly.  Very well received, it was soon followed by "Bow Shooting" in Scribner's Monthly and a book deal, which resulted in his archery classic The Witchery of Archery (1878).

The book sold out. 

Now firmly established as a popular writer, Thompson became "Archery Editor" for Forest and Stream magazine, and rode the crest of a wave of national enthusiasm. His writing began a national archery and scouting craze that was a clear pre-cursor to the Boy Scout movement.

In January 1879, a national convention of archers met in Crawford, IN, and installed Maurice Thompson as the first Chairman of the National Archery Association. During the following years, he presided over many national championship meets, and became known as the "Father of Archery" in America.

Elected to the Indiana State Legislature in 1879, Thompson went on to become a very popular and well respected nature writer, publishing more than 20 books and and a volume of poems before his death in 1901.  See a detailed list of his works here.

His most popular work, Alice of Old Vincennes (1900), appeared only a year before his death from pneumonia on 15 February 1901. 



Sources

Banta, R.E. "James Maurice Thompson (1844 - 1901)" Indiana Authors and Their Books 1816 - 1916 (Crawfordsville, IN: Wabash College, 1949)

Huntington, Cliff. "Maurice Thompson: The War Years."

Huntington, Cliff. "Maurice Thompson: The Final Years."

Wikipedia.  "Maurice Thompson."