Books with author Mary 1870-1936 Johnston

Released in February, 1900, it sold over 220,000 copies in just twelve weeks, and launched the career of one of the South's most talented writers, Mary Johnston. The plot is tailor-made for action. A beautiful maid-of-honor, a ward of King James I, escapes marriage to a libertine nobleman, who is the king's favorite. She flees to colonial Virginia with a cargo of brides sent out by the Virginia Company of London, and marries a rough, hard-working, settler. He turns out to be a former English soldier and a famous swordsman, who must now defend his wife against her former fiancee who has tracked her to Jamestown. From that starting point, we are treated to duels, shipwrecks, sieges, poisonings, adventures with pirates, and capture by indians-each following the other with breathtaking rapidity. To Have and to Hold was the first romance novel to go #1 on an official bestseller list

Mary Johnston (November 21, 1870 – May 9, 1936)[1] was an American novelist and women's rights advocate from Virginia. She was one of America's best selling authors during her writing career and had three silent films adapted from her novels.The daughter of an American Civil War soldier who became a successful lawyer, Mary Johnston was born in the small town of Buchanan, Virginia. A small and frail girl, she was educated at home by family and tutors. She grew up with a love of books and was financially independent enough to devote herself to writing Johnston wrote historical books and novels that often combined romance with history. Her first book, Prisoners of Hope (1898), dealt with colonial times in Virginia as did her second novel, To Have and to Hold (1900), and later, Sir Mortimer (1904). The Goddess of Reason (1907) uses the theme of the French Revolution, and in Lewis Rand (1908) the author portrayed political life at the dawn of the 19th century.To Have and to Hold was serialized in the The Atlantic Monthly in 1899 and published in book form 1900, by Houghton Mifflin. The book proved enormously popular and was the bestselling novel in the United States in 1900. Johnston's next work, titled Audrey, was the fifth bestselling book in the U.S. in 1902, and Sir Mortimer, serialized in Harper's Monthly magazine from November 1903 through April 1904, was published in 1904. Her best-selling 1911 novel on the American Civil War, The Long Roll, brought Johnston into open conflict with Stonewall Jackson's widow, Mary Anna Jackson. Beyond her native America, Johnston's novels were also very popular in Canada and in England.

The valley lay like a ribbon thrown into the midst of the encompassing hills. The grass which grew there was soft and fine and abundant; the trees which sprang from its dark, rich mould were tall and great of girth. A bright stream flashed through it, and the sunshine fell warm upon the grass and changed the tassels of the maize into golden plumes. Above the valley, east and north and south, rose the hills, clad in living green, mantled with the purpling grape, wreathed morn and eve with trailing mist. To the westward were the mountains, and they dwelt apart in a blue haze. Only in the morning, if the mist were not there, the sunrise struck upon their long summits, and in the evening they stood out, high and black and fearful, against the splendid sky. The child who played beside the cabin door often watched them as the valley filled with shadows, and thought of them as a great wall between her and some land of the fairies which must needs lie beyond that barrier, beneath the splendor and the evening star. The Indians called them the Endless Mountains, and the child never doubted that they ran across the world and touched the floor of heaven.

This was the #1 best-selling novel in the United States in 1900, made into movies several times in subsequent years. It is set in colonial North America, beginning in the year 1621. A new movie adapted from the book was filmed in 2011. The dialog is Early Modern English, somewhat similar to Shakespeare's writings, not contemporary English but similar enough to be understood. The narration is almost modern English, easily understood. An English soldier, Ralph Percy, turned Virginian explorer in Jamestown colony, buys a wife -- a girl named Jocelyn Leigh -- not knowing that she is the escaped ward of King James I, fleeing a forced marriage to Lord Carnal. Jocelyn has no love for Ralph at first; she even seems to abhor him and explains she only married to have refuge after she fled from England, under an assumed name. Lord Carnal, Jocelyn's husband-to-be, eventually comes to Jamestown to find his promised bride, not knowing that Ralph Percy and Jocelyn Leigh are already man and wife. Lord Carnal attempts to kidnap Jocelyn several times and eventually follows Ralph, Jocelyn, and their two companions, as they escape from the King's orders to arrest Ralph and carry Jocelyn back to England. This romance-epic-adventure novel carries the reader along with humor, shipwreck, pirates, entrapment, false accusations, trial, colonial conflict with Native Americans, capture, rescue, suicide, salvation, love, happy ending