Pamela Hill (1) (1920–)

Daneclere is an older book (1978) from my mother’s library that I decided to read. I knew it was supposed to be gothic romance, but it was more like gothic horror. I didn’t care much for the storyline. There is more incest and rape in this book than in any modern thriller I have come across. The main character, Honor Sawtrey, is a good woman. She runs Daneclere, a large estate, and looks after her children and quite a few of the servant’s and other relatives’ children—most of them show more illegitimate. However, I’d rather leave my kids with an alcoholic uncle for all the attention she pays them. It seems like she could have done a better job if she’s going to volunteer for it. I know times were hard in rural England in the 17th century. If you weren’t a wealthy landowner, you were a servant or dirt poor, but most of the boys and men in this story were either stupid or just plain evil. There was a little history injected depicting the wars between the papists and protestants. However, I really can’t recommend this book. show less

Leah Considine is our narrator remembering back to when she was a Young girl.Her father was the local curate and Always on the outsides of her World was the Aske family.

Her life becomes involved with theirs when her mother suddenly dies leaving her father a grieving widower. When Lady Kintyre the daughter of the Aske matriarch offers to console him one thing leads to Another and they form an attachment and marry. Their happiness is cut short however when both are killed in an horrific show more carriage accident on their honeymoon.

Now Leah is truly an orphan but she is taken in by Old Madam Aske her stepgrandmother to be raised at the mansion alongside the the two Aske Children,the heir is Peter(a sadistic creep) and Ann (a Beautiful dimwit)

Peter grows up to become a spendthrift degenerate and gambles away the ancestral home leaving the Aske womenfolk on the mercies of Simon Carden who is the bastard son of the eldest son of Old Madam but who was killed fighting for the Jacobites. Simon harbors resentment being not only denied his birthright but also blaming the Askes for the Death of his mother.

And now when he has become a rich man he wants it all from the house to marrying Ann Aske and taking her name.

I am not sure I have ever been so equally bored AND appalled by a book.

Now dont get me wrong when I pick up a gothic I dont excpect it to be all sunshine and happiness.I do expect many things like old forbidding houses,strange families and Deaths. (not to mention the heroine running scared in a nightgown.)

But the "Devil of Aske" first of all suffers from lifeless writing and the first person omniscient narration of an old Leah reciting her life makes for a plodding dry read and people are rarely shown as interacting and only occassionally being allowed to have dialogues but somehow still inexplicably manages to connect with each other

If you are not turned off by the writing style then you might want to avoid this because of the animal torturing and how Leah
starts getting molested and is later raped by the adolescent Peter and he shoves a stone up her lady parts.


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Jonet Douglas, Lady Glamis, is taken into the confidence of her brother the sixth Earl of Angus about his plans to marry Margaret Tudor. She is beautiful and loyal and marries the person arranged for her, but the lustful King Henry the VIII gets repulsed by her and the two things eventually cause her to be burned at the stake. Memorable story of the political and social intrigue of the time.

-- Pamela Hill's BRIDE OF AE is pre-Downton Abbey. This reader thoroughly enjoyed novel. --