Jacob Faithful (Paperback) | Released: 14 Nov 2017

" JACOB FAITHFUL " is the first of a trio of novels which Captain Marryat wrote in the course of the year 1834, the other two being " Mr. Midshipman Easy ' and " Japhet in Search of a Father." They did not appear consecutively in three-volume form, for the collection of stories entitled " The Pacha of Many Tales' was the immediate successor of " Jacob Faithful," while the publication of " Midshipman Easy" and " Japhet" was deferred until 1836. Nevertheless the pages of the Metropolitan Magazine bore witness during the course of 1834 to the enormous industry of our author, perhaps accounted for by the expense to which he had been put in standing for Tower Hamlets, as already narrated in the introduction to " Peter Simple." Now that Captain Marryat is really launched on his literary career, he has no time or inclination to quarrel with his critics, or to give us those personal disquisitions as to his motives and his meanings which appeared in the earlier volumes. He goes in a straightforward way to the execution of his business, occupied solely with the adventures of his hero, and never allowing the course of his narrative to be embarrassed with explanatory or exculpatory passages. Moreover, he has learnt better than before the principles of his profession; his object is to interest the reader and carry out his novelistic design - the result being that "Jacob Faithful' is, from a technical standpoint, one of the best of his books, now and again reminding us of Smollett, and in the opinion of some critics representing a high-water mark in Marryat's literary career................ William Leonard Courtney (1850 - 1 November 1928) was an English author, born at Poona, India, and educated at Oxford. In 1873 he became headmaster of Somersetshire College, Bath, and in 1894 editor of the Fortnightly Review. He married in 1874 Cordelia Blanche Place and had seven children, she died in 1907. In 1911 he married Janet Elizabeth Hogarth (Janet E. Courtney), a scholar, writer and feminist, born in Barton-on-Humber (27 November 1865 - 24 September 1954)....... Captain Frederick Marryat (10 July 1792 - 9 August 1848) was a British Royal Navy officer, a novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens. He is noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story, particularly for his semi-autobiographical novel Mr Midshipman Easy (1836), for his children's novel The Children of the New Forest (1847), and for a widely used system of maritime flag signalling, known as Marryat's Code...........