G P R James: 67 books

George Payne Rainsford James was a British writer who produced a remarkable number of historical novels and romances over the course of his thirty-year career. The sweeping epic Richelieu unfolds amidst the cultural tumult and political shifts of seventeenth-century France.

This is a romantic fiction that purports to be a biography of Arabella Stuart of the Stuart royal line that ruled Great Britain. From the foreword: “In depicting the characters of the various persons who appear upon the scene, however, I have had a more difficult task to perform, being most...

Excerpt: "Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built by architects of the early reign of James the First. It had all the peculiarities--I might almost say the oddities--of that particular epoch in the building art. Chimneys innumerable had it. Heaven only knows what rooms they ventilated;...

A fantastic historical novel about the adventures of a highwayman.

A stranger rides across the Kentish countryside when his attention is called to a cottage where violence is being done to an elderly couple. The knight, for such he appears to be, rushes to their aid. Soon after, the strange and prophetic Sir Cesar appears on the scene and foretells of danger ahead.

Excerpt: "It was a dark and stormy night,—a very dark night indeed. No dog's mouth, whether terrier, mastiff, or Newfoundland, was ever so dark as that night. The hatches had been battened down, and every aperture but one, by which any of the great, curly-pated, leaping waves could jump into the vessel, had been closed. What vessel? the reader may perhaps inquire."

Excerpt: "A solitary room at midnight: a single wax candle lighted on the table: the stiff dull crimson silken curtains of the bed close drawn: half a dozen phials and two or three glasses. Is it the chamber of a sick man? He must sleep sound if it be, for there is no noise—not even a breath;...

Excerpt: "In giving this book to the public I have but little to explain. The reader who takes it up may expect to find something respecting the Princess Honoria. He will, however, find nothing. All that we know of her history is uninteresting, except to those who love to dwell upon the pruriencies...

Excerpt: "It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night; the wind howled in fury through the trees, and round the towers; the large drops of rain dashed against the casements, the small lozenges of glass rattled and clattered in their leaden frames, and the thick boards of the oaken floor heaved...

Excerpt: "Of all the hard-working people on the earth, there are none so serviceable to her neighbours as the moon. She lights lovers and thieves. She keeps watch-dogs waking. She is a constant resource to poets and romance-writers. She helps the compounders of almanacks amazingly. She has something...

Excerpt: "It was an hour past midnight - the sentries had just been relieved upon the castle wall - and Hugh de Monthermer sat by the window, looking out into the depth of night, and gazing at the far twinkling of the stars. The mind was occupied in the same manner as the body, for it was looking...

The story is really about one Jean Charost, who enters into the service of the Duke of Orleans in the early 1400's, and proves himself worthy. It has lots of sword fights and sieges and dungeons and fleeing by night, in the good tradition of a swashbuckler. (Goodreads)

Romance writing, when rightly viewed and rightly treated, is of the same nature as the teaching by parables of the eastern nations; and I believe, when high objects are steadily kept in view and good principles carefully inculcated, it may prove far more generally beneficial than more severe forms...