Abstract
The career of Sir Arthur (Thomas) Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) was dedicated to the profession of letters, and to much else. He led one of the busiest lives of any writer of historical romances, and his career deserves to be sketched in some detail before we turn to a characteristic novel, the third in what lengthened into an extraordinary list of some thirty volumes of novels and short stories. (The Splendid Spur, published in 1889, followed Dead Man’s Rock, 1887, and the The Astonishing History of Troy Town, 1888.) ‘Q’ was prolific, clubbable, and one of the most influential dons who ever lectured at Cambridge University.
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Notes
Basil Willey, The ‘Q’ Tradition / An Inaugural Lecture ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946 ), p. 26.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, A Lecture on Lectures / Introductory Volume ( London: Hogarth Press, 1927 ), p. 21.
F. Brittain, Arthur Quiller-Couch / A biographical study of ‘Q’ (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1948), p. ix.
A. L. Rowse, Quiller Couch /A Portrait of ‘Q’ ( London: Methuen, 1988 ), p. 234.
George Gissing, Letters to Members of his Family, edited by Algemon and Ellen Gissing (London: Constable, 1927 ), p. 138.
George Moore, Avowals ( New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926 ), pp. 145–146.
H. V. Marrot, The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy ( New York: Scribner’s, 1936 ), p. 772.
Arnold Bennett, Journals, 1896–1910, edited by Newman Flower ( London: Cassell, 1932 ), pp. 17–18.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Poet as Citizen / and Other Papers ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934 ), p. 65.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Charles Dickens and Other Victorians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), passim, and ‘The Victorian Age’, in Studies in Literature / Second Series ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922 ), pp. 279–301.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Adventures in Criticism ( London: Cassell, 1896 ), p. 184.
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© 1995 Harold Orel
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Orel, H. (1995). Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (‘Q’) and The Splendid Spur (1889). In: The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371491_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371491_9
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