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A swashbuckling romance, The Broad Highway is narrated by Peter Vibart, the story's hero, who tells his tale most disarmingly. Believing himself to be disinherited, he sets out on the "broad highway" in search of a livelihood and adventure. He finds both: a livelihood in the form of blacksmithing and adventure (and love) in a startling form.Tags
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This was the best-selling novel of 1911, a romantic tale set in about 1811 where you know what is going to happen from the very first page, when Peter Vibart is promised a vast legacy if he will marry Sophia Sefton, but declares he would rather not. He flees metropolitan life to the village of Sissinghurst in Kent, where he encounters many good-hearted comic yokels and falls in love with a mysterious woman who comes to live with him in his cottage. She has firm, well-rounded arms. (That's arms, I say, arms.) It takes Peter (unlike the reader) most of the book to work out her real identity, and to deal with his rival for the marital legacy, his rather two-dimensionally villainous cousin, though I show more guess he is distracted by the occasional staggering coincidence and his anachronistic inclination towards Christian Science doctrine. I had never heard of Farnol before but apparently he was one of the most successful popular novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and I suppose I can see the attraction of his undemanding yet breathless style. (Sissinghurst, by the way, was called Milkstreet in 1811 and changed its name only later in the century; more anachronism.) show less
This was the best-selling novel of 1911, a romantic tale set in about 1811 where you know what is going to happen from the very first page, when Peter Vibart is promised a vast legacy if he will marry Sophia Sefton, but declares he would rather not. He flees metropolitan life to the village of Sissinghurst in Kent, where he encounters many good-hearted comic yokels and falls in love with a mysterious woman who comes to live with him in his cottage. She has firm, well-rounded arms. (That's arms, I say, arms.) It takes Peter (unlike the reader) most of the book to work out her real identity, and to deal with his rival for the marital legacy, his rather two-dimensionally villainous cousin, though I show more guess he is distracted by the occasional staggering coincidence and his anachronistic inclination towards Christian Science doctrine. I had never heard of Farnol before but apparently he was one of the most successful popular novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and I suppose I can see the attraction of his undemanding yet breathless style. (Sissinghurst, by the way, was called Milkstreet in 1811 and changed its name only later in the century; more anachronism.) show less
The best selling historical romance of 1910. The first and best.
The first book in which we meet Peter Vibart and Charmian Brown.
Excellent relaxation
paperback
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Best 20th Century Books as of 1924
100 works; 6 members
Publisher's Weekly Bestsellers Part I - 1895-1939
399 works; 8 members
Author Information
60+ Works 905 Members
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Awards and Honors
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Is abridged in
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Broad Highway
- Original title
- The Broad Highway
- Original publication date
- 1910
- People/Characters
- Peter Vibart; Charmian Brown; Sophia Sefton
- Important places
- Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, England, UK
- Dedication
- To
Shirley Byron Jevons
The friend of my boyish ambitions
This book is dedicated
As a mark of my gratitude, affection and esteem
J. F. - First words
- As I sat of an early summer morning in the shade of a tree, eating friend bacon with a tinker, the thought came to me that I might some day write a book of my own: a book that should treat of the roads and by-roads, of trees,... (show all) and wind in lonely places, of rapid brooks and lazy streams, of the glory of dawn, the glow of evening, and the purple solitude of night; a book of wayside inns and sequestered taverns; a book of country things and ways and people.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And thus did I, all unworthy as I am, win the heart of a noble woman whose love I pray will endure, even as mine will, when we shall have journeyed to the end of this Broad Highway, which is Life, and into the mystery of the Beyond.
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 823.912
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Romance, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 823.912 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1901-1945
- LCC
- PZ3 .F238 — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction in English
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 93
- Popularity
- 345,794
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.55)
- Languages
- Dutch, English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 38
- ASINs
- 9
