These are links for those who know that a good story always has some swordfighting in it.
"And that the poet hath that idea is manifest, by delivering them forth, also, is not wholly imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the air; but so far substantially it worketh, not only to make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular excellency, as nature might have done, but to to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses."
-- Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy
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According to The Oxford English Dictionary, the term "swash" has had several meanings. One was "to dash or cast violently" (1577). A "swashbuckler" was "one who makes a noise by striking his own or his opponent's shield with his sword ... a swaggering bravo or ruffian." Picture a cool stud of the late 15th or early 16th century wearing a sword and buckler (small shield often with a spike in the middle) on his belt and clanking the two together as he swaggers around town: "Clankity-clank; I'm a tough guy."
During the early part of Shakespeare's life the rapier-and-datgger combination was just coming in from Italy and was considered Italianate, i.e., effeminate, treacherous, and cowardly. Manly Englishmen fought with the broadsword and buckler. By the early 17th century, just in time for D'Artagnan's adventures, the rapier was the only weapon for European gentlemen, and swashbuckling (fighting with broadsword and buckler) was called "the serving man's defense."
For more background, see the Britannica's article on fencing.
The Odyssey (translated by S.H. Butcher)
The Odyssey (translated by Samuel Butler)
As a kid in a sawmill town in East Texas, my big thrill of the week was going to the movies on Saturday to catch this week's installment of the serial ("the continued piece" as we called it). The all-time best was The Adventures of Sir Galahad. It starred George Reeves, who was later the first TV Superman. He had the requisite fat, silly sidekick, Sir Bors (shabby treatment for one of the Grail Knights, I know), and was occupied with recovering Excalibur, which had been stolen by--who else?--the Black Knight. I don't remember much about it after all these years, but there was a wonderful sequence in which Sir Bors was walking through a forest and the trees suddenly started attacking him with swords. And the heroes kept falling into quicksand as people always did in those old serials. The series was cultural dynamite to a kid whose known world centered around the sawmill commissary. Read more about the series at http://www.celebhost.net/georgereeves/galahad.html.
The culturally interesting thing is that some of the old illiterate millhands and turpentiners, whose main interest in life seemed to be spittin', were somewhat caught up in Sir Galahad, too. I can remember them speculating about who the Black Knight really was and wondering how he got a drink with his helmet on. Later on, this made it a lot more understandable when I read about 19th-century cowboys and sailors entertaining each other with dramatic readings of Shakespeare. It's no joke: there is a common literature that speaks to almost everybody.
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Books About Robin Hood
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A. Conan Doyle
The Richard Sharpe Novels
Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe Novels. Cornwell's novels about an officer in a British rifle regiment during the Napoleonic Wars. If you follow the TV series, you might like the tie-in book, available at Amazon.com: Organizations
Baroness Orczy.
Sir Percy's Place (Interesting information about the novel and the plays and movies based on it) Edmond Rostand
Sources
The Imperial Guard of Napoleon Modern History Sourcebook The Napoleon Series. Online magazine for Napoleon enthusiasts. The Napoleonic Library The Napoleonic Web Association Napoleonicwars.com A Regency Repository
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G.A. Henty
(Frankly, I found him unreadably chauvinistic, but he i s really Victorian.)
Books by G.A. Henty
GAH and The Marquis de La Fayette? by Fred West
The Henty Heroes are Back!The Quintessential Victorian War: Beautiful Uniforms, Headlong Courage, Blundering Generals
Crimean War (1854-56) (A brief history of the war)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.The Charge of the Light Brigade - a poem
The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope. The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope. The Prisoner of Zenda (another Web edition)
Anthony Hope. Rupert of Hentzau (the tragic sequel to the Prisoner of Zenda)
The Flashman Novels
Historical Sources
The Long 19th Century
19th-Century Britain
The Victorian Web
Artists' Biographies: N.C. Wyeth
Brandywine River Museum
N.C. Wyeth
N.C. Wyeth
N.C. Wyeth: A biography (review)
N.C. Wyeth: A biography (homepage for the book)
N.C. Wyeth: Works Viewable on the Internet
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945)
N.C. Wyeth, American Illustrator
N.C. Wyeth Bookstore
N.C. Wyeth's Studio
Some illustrations from Treasure Island
The Wyeth Center
H. Pyle (biography)
Legends: Poets and Painters
H. Pyle (another Pyle site)
Correspondence, 1890-1904
Howard Pyle, American Golden Age Illustrator, 1853-1911]
Howard Pyle's Angels
Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
Pyle's Illustrations for King Arthur
Pyle's Illustrations for Robin Hood
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If you can find a copy, take a look at:
Octavo: Digital Rare Books
Violet Books: Swashbucklers, Costume Historicals, Heroic Fantasies, & Tales of Chivalry
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Fantasy Cutlery East |
Alhambra Models
British Model Soldier Society
Grande Armée
Historex Agents
Historex USA
Hobby WebJ.S. Dietz
King's Hobby Shop
The Last Square
Military Miniature Internet Links
Military Models and DioramasOlaf's List of Links
The Old Guard
The Red Lancer
Stockade Miniatures
Steumpfle's Military Miniatures
Stockade Miniatures
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If this is one of your topics, you might find these books interesting:Bassoff, Lawrence. Mighty Movies : Movie Poster Art from Hollywood's Greatest Adventure Epics and Spectaculars. Beverly Hills, CA. : Lawrence Bassoff Collection, Inc., c2000. ISBN: 1-886-31014-9 Fraser, George MacDonald. The Hollywood History of the World: from One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now. New York: William Morrow, 1988. ISBN: 0-688-07520-7. Past Imperfect: History According to theMovies, general editor, Marc C. Carnes. New York: Holt, 1995. ISBN: 0-8050-3760-8, available at Amazon.com. Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York . London ; Boston : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. ISBN: 0-710-08478-1.
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Zorro is an interesting anomaly: an American swashbuckler. The exact era of his adventures seems to vary from movie to movie. Sometimes they take place in the 1820s; sometimes it's the 1840s.
The sword Zorro uses in the Douglas Fairbanks movie and in the Disney series, starring Guy Williams, is strangely anachronistic. Look closely and you'll see that it is a modern fencing saber (yes, a saber can have a straight blade) similar to the cavalry sabers adopted just before World War I in the U.S. and Great Britain and scarcely used in that horror show of barbed war, trenches and machine guns. Since the original Doug Fairbanks silent movie was released in 1920, Doug was using what was to him a completely modern weapon.
This odd convention seems to have been continued until the most recent Zorro movie; Antonio is anachronistic in the other direction, wielding a rather Renaissancey-looking weaponThe Mask of Zorro (The new version with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas)
Another Zorro page (Antonio does have his fans.)
And the Official Mask of Zorro Website
Zorro: Welcome to the Official Website of Zorro
What is the late Guy Williams' son doing? He's running Zorro Visual Computing.
Other Zorro Sites
According to Poul Anderson, stories set in the future or on other planets are simply one other type of historical romance.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was the creator of the swords-in-space subgenre, unless you count De Bergerac's stories of his own travels to the sun and the moon.
Chessmen of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs Motes & Quotes XL
The ERB Webring
The Gods of Mars (Text of the novel)
The Mad King (Burroughs' Ruritanian-style novel)
The Outlaw of Torn (Burroughs' only novel set in the Middle Ages)
A Princess of Mars (Text of the novel, first in the series)
A Princess of Mars (With pulp-style illustrations)
Thuvia, Maid of Mars (Text of the novel)
The Warlord of Mars (Text of the novel)
Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan and the subject of the movie The Whole Wide World.
Fritz Leiber, creator of Ffafhrd and the Grey Mouser
The Fritz Leiber CollectionJ.R.R. Tolkien
Jack Vance Appreciation Webring
Camelot the legend
Castle Life
Falkenstein Castle
The History Net
The History Place
"He was the father of all novelists." -- Balzac
The Bride of Lammermoor (Text of the novel)
Ivanhoe (Text of the novel)
Lochinvar Facts
Rob Roy (Text of the novel) See also the website for the movie Rob Roy)
Scott's Prose
SELECTED POETRY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott: Miscellaneous Prose Works
Sir Walter's Homepage
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Alexandre Dumas pére (lots of links and information for this
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The Robert Louis Stevenson Home
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About Sabatini
The Last of the Great Swashbucklers by Jesse F. Knight
The Life and Work of Rafael Sabatini
The Works
Bardelys the Magnificent
The Historical Nights' Entertainment
Hronika Kapitana Blada
The Lion's Skin
Mistress Wilding
Scaramouche: a Romance of the French Revolution
The Snare
St. Martin's Summer
The Trampling of the Lilies
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Catherine Karp, a nice lady from San Diego, is the winner of two awards for her novel Gilded.
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