Beschreibung:

HUEFFER, Ford Madox (1873-1939). The Fifth Queen Crowned. A Romance. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1908. 8°. Original cloth gilt (spine faded, front inner hinges splitting). PRESENTATION COPY, front free endpaper inscribed, "Else Hueffer afftely [sic] from Ford M.H. 26th March MCMVIII". FIRST EDITION. The final volume of a historical trilogy, based on the life of Katharine Howard and involving the pertinent theme of sexual infidelity, though Hueffer contradicted most authorities on the subject by making the queen chaste. When Conrad read the proofs of this concluding volume, he wrote to his collaborator to express profound admiration of one special ability, affirming "it is only Hueffer who writes for love -- for the sheer love of this world of vain appearances and mortal men ... that sort of impartial love is a rare and distinguished motive of expression." Conrad found in The Fifth Queen Crowned "not a single false note, not a jar, hardly ever a pause. It is a great harmony." Nevertheless, by calling it "the Swan song of Historical Romance," he made it clear that he believed this form of novel, introduced by Walter Scott would not survive (quoted by Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford , I, 1996, p. 217). In his essay on Ford, Graham Greene noted the "enormous vigour and authenticity" of the trilogy: "We are nearer the historical plays of Shakespeare than to the fictions of such historical writers as Miss Irwin and Miss Heyer . . . In The Fifth Queen Ford tries out the impressionist method which he was later to employ with triumphant ease in the great confused armistice-day scene of A Man Could Stand Up ... The Fifth Queen is a magnificent bravura piece" ( Collected Essays , p. 161). The other novels in the sequence are The Fifth Queen (1906) and Privy Seal (1907). Harvey A25.