A Gentleman Of France

A Gentleman of France is a historical novel written by Stanley Weyman. It is set in 16th century France during the reign of King Henry III. The story follows the adventures of a young nobleman named Gil de Berault, who is forced to flee his home after a duel gone wrong. He joins the army of the Huguenots, a Protestant group in France, and becomes a skilled soldier. Gil rises through the ranks and becomes a trusted advisor to the Huguenot leader, the Duke of Anjou. However, his loyalty is tested when he falls in love with the Duke's sister, Marguerite de Valois, who is also the wife of the Catholic King Henry III. Gil must navigate the dangerous political landscape of 16th century France to protect his love and his life. The novel is filled with action, romance, and political intrigue, and provides a vivid portrait of life in Renaissance France.Weyman loved 16th Century France, intrigue and swashbuckling. Some said he was like Dumas, without all the tediuous little bits.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Stanley John Weyman (1855 - 1928) was an English writer of historical romance. His most popular works were written in 1890-1895 and set in late 16th and early 17th-century France. While very successful at the time, they are now largely forgotten. Weyman in his day was immensely popular and admired by Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde. Works like The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas had established a market for popular historical fiction and it was a crowded field. Contemporary rivals included Baroness Orczy, A. E. W. Mason, John Buchan and Rafael Sabatini. The biographer Reginald Pound grouped Weyman with Arnold Bennett, Anthony Hope, Aldous Huxley, Dorothy L. Sayers and Somerset Maugham as Strand writers. He is now perhaps the least familiar of all these. His greatest success came before 1895 (Under the Red Robe, A Gentleman of France and The Red Cockade) and he stopped writing entirely between 1908 and 1919. His style and focus are more typical of Victorian writers. Weyman's strength lies in historical detail, often in less familiar areas. The Long Night is based on the Duke of Savoy's attempt to storm Geneva in December 1602, an event still celebrated annually in a festival called L'Escalade. Weyman received an award from the city for his research. The financial security of early success allowed him to choose subjects of personal interest. Some had less general appeal, such as the 1832 Reform Bill (treated in Chippinge), post-1815 industrialisation (Starvecrow Farm) or the 1825 financial crisis (Ovington's Bank, reprinted in 2012 and 2015 on the back of a similar crisis in 2008). Weyman called his own books "pleasant fables" and was aware of their modest literary value.