John Louis Beatty (1922–1975)

Once again the Beattys give their readers a spirited heroine whose ideas are ahead of her time. Rosalind Broome, though a girl of gentle birth in Elizabethan England, refuses to accept traditional training in the ladylike virtues. In fact, she frequently dresses as a boy for protection whenever on a distant errand.

Her story begins when she is kidnapped on such an errand and taken to a den of thieves in London. There she is "baptized" into the fold with a tankard of ale. Fortunately, her show more failure as a pickpocket leads Rosalind to the alluring and forbidden world of the theater. Maintaining her boy's disguise, she joins a company of players and soon is acting feminine parts in the gentle Will's plays. Eventually, however, her actor's deception is exposed, and as Master Rosalind she is brought to a surprising confrontation with a kindred spirit, the ravaged old Queen herself.

The theater of Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth's court, and the criminal underworld of the sixteenth century are all colorfully re-created here in this exuberant novel of historical adventure. show less

Rosalind Broome, a girl of gentle birth, has no desire to become a lady - instead she prefers to dress as a boy upon her errands for her grandfather. On one such occasion, Rosalind is kidnapped and taken into the underworld of London. But her failure as a pickpocket soon leaves her free to try her hand at the theater. Her talent for acting shows itself early as she manages to convince even accomplished players that she is a boy. But far more than the wrath of her grandfather rests upon her show more head if she is discovered - a relative seeks her death to secure his title, and females on the stage are strictly forbidden by law.

This plotline is one of my favorites - girls dressed up as boys playing girls on Shakespeare's stage. And this one is certainly enjoyable, but it doesn't hold up to my favorites. On more than one occasion I felt like this was a shadow of a mixture of King of Shadows by Susan Cooper and A Murder for Her Majesty.

This was written in that 'children's historical novel' style where there's snippets of history worked clumsily into the narrative. The sentences often seem crafted to explain too much rather than letting the sense of the unfamiliar words flow naturally. But I will grant them that there were interesting tidbits I didn't know before both about the thieves' world and the theater.

The mystery didn't work particularly well because of the inclusion of scenes from the villains' points of view - I think it would have been more effective if the readers knew as little as Rosalind. The plot isn't bad, and at times there was a sense of the spirited girl Rosalind was supposed to be, but it didn't capture the spirit of the theater like other books on this subject I have read, and Rosalind seemed to worry precious little about being found out.

Not bad, and I'll probably keep it in my collection, but I'd recommend King of Shadows for the theater aspects. And probably My Father Had a Daughter for the cross-dressing player bits. show less

Landing in England in 1651 to an unfriendly welcome after the long ocean voyage from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, fifteen year old Penitence Hervey expects a warm welcome from her English relatives, the Killingtrees of Campion Towers. Instead, she is greeted with a reserve as impenetrable and mysterious as the dark silent halls of Campion Towers. There she becomes deeply involved in the conflict between Oliver Cromwell's Puritans and the Cavaliers loyal to the King.

Faceless in the dim light of a half moon, a man hurtles out of the shadows, claps a hand over Anthony Grey’s mouth and lifts him off the ground. A second man gags him and binds his wrists.

These few seconds on a night in 1668 completely change the course of Anthony’s life. As a bondservant to a Boston tavernkeeper Anthony has been keeping the accounts and entertaining the customers by doing sums in his head. It is for this skill that he is kidnapped and carried off to Port Royal, show more Jamaica, where he is pressed in to service as clerk to the notorious buccaneer Henry Morgan.


Anthony survives the explosion of Morgan’s flagship, fights in battles on land and sea and witnesses the pirates’ fearsome depredations on Spanish shipping and colonial cities, culminating in the infamous sacking of Panama City in 1672. show less