A LADDER OF SWORDS If it does not seem too childish a candor to say so, Michel and Angele always seems to me like some old letter lifted out of an ancient cabinet with the faint perfume of bygone days upon it. Perhaps that is because the story itself had its origin in a true but brief record of some good Huguenots who fled from France and took refuge in England. . . . I wove round Michel de la Foret and Angele Aubert a soft, bright cloud of romance which would not leave my vision until I sat down and wrote out what, in the writing, seemed to me a true history. It was as though some telepathy between the days of Elizabeth and our own controlled me -- self-hypnotism, I suppose; but still, there it was. There will be found a few anachronisms in this tale, but none so important as to give a wrong impression of the events of Queen Elizabeth's reign. -- from Gilbert Parker's Introduction

Author Biography

Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker (1862 - 1932), known as Gilbert Parker, Canadian novelist and British politician, was born at Camden East, Addington, Ontario, the son of Captain J. Parker, R.A. The best of his novels are those in which he first took for his subject the history and life of the French Canadians and his permanent literary reputation rests on the fine quality, descriptive and dramatic, of his Canadian stories. Pierre and his People (1892) was followed by Mrs. Falchion (1893), The Trail of the Sword (1894), When Valmond came to Pontiac (1895), An Adventurer of Icy North (1895) and The Seats of the Mighty (1896, dramatized in 1897). The Seats of the Mighty was a historical novel depicting the English conquest of Quebec with James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm as two of the characters. The Lane that Had No Turning (1900), a collection of short stories set in the fictional Quebec town of Pontiac, contains some of his best work and is viewed by some as being in the tradition of such Gothic classics as Stoker's Dracula and James's The Turn of the Screw. In The Battle of the Strong (1898) he broke new ground, laying his scene in the Channel Islands. His chief later books were The Right of Way (1901), Donovan Pasha (1902), The Ladder of Swords (1904), The Weavers (1907), Northern Lights (1909) and The Judgment House (1913). Parker had three that made it into the top 10 on the annual list of bestselling novels in the United States, two of which were on it for two years in a row.