Books with author Mary C. M Johnston

In this important new novel, Miss Johnston goes back to the field of some of her earlier successes -- the spacious Elizabethan times. The story opens in the death chamber of the great Queen, and with that uncanny power of historic resurrection of which Miss Johnston is master, the reader is made to feel the great issues that are hanging in the balance, -- issues of thought and faith within England itself, issues of imperialistic destiny in the great colonies overseas. The two chief characters are Joan Heron, a beautiful girl of strong, original nature, and Dr. Aderhold, a thinker in advance of his time. As the plot develops, not only is Aderhold suspected of atheism and unholy practices in the black art, but Joan is accused of witchcraft. They are arrested, and sentenced to death, but escape, and take ship for Virginia. As the voyage progresses, her sex and identity are suspected, and she and Aderhold are cast adrift in an open boat. This catastrophe, however, is not final, and in the Bahamas and later in England, the story comes to its impressive ending. As a historic picture, the story is exceptionally strong, and perhaps the impression that will live longest is that of the marvelous Elizabethan world of adventure, controversy, passion, and vital personality.

"The Witch" by Mary Johnston. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

THE long service of praise and thanksgiving was well-nigh over when I first saw her.She sat some ten feet from me, in the corner, and so in the shadow of a tall pew. Beyond her was a row of milkmaid beauties, red of cheek, free of eye, deep-bosomed, and beribboned like Maypoles. I looked again, and saw—and see—a rose amongst blowzed poppies and peonies, a pearl amidst glass beads, a Perdita in a ring of rustics, a nonparella of all grace and beauty! As I gazed with all my eyes, I found more than grace and beauty in that wonderful face,—found pride, wit, fire, determination, finally shame and anger. For, feeling my eyes upon her, she looked up and met what she must have thought the impudent stare of an appraiser. Her face, which had been without color, pale and clear like the sky about the evening star, went crimson in a moment. She bit her lip and shot at me one withering glance, then dropped her eyelids and hid the lightning. When I looked at her again, covertly, and from under my hand raised as though to push back my hair, she was pale once more, and her dark eyes were fixed upon the water and the green trees without the window.The congregation rose, and she stood up with the other maids. Her dress of dark woolen, severe and unadorned, her close ruff and prim white coif, would have cried “Puritan,” had ever Puritan looked like this woman, upon whom the poor apparel had the seeming of purple and ermine.- Taken from "To Have and to Hold" written by Mary Johnston

Elizabeth of England died in 1603. There came to the English throne James Stuart, King of Scotland, King now of England and Scotland. In 1604 a treaty of peace ended the long war with Spain. Gone was the sixteenth century; here, though in childhood, was the seventeenth century.Now that the wars were over, old colonization schemes were revived in the English mind. Of the motives which in the first instance had prompted these schemes, some with the passing of time had become weaker, some remained quite as strong as before.

"Mary Johnston's THE LONG ROLL and CEASE FIRING are quite possibly the best Civil War novels ever written..." Cease Firing picks up where Mary Johnston’s previous book, The Long Roll leaves off. We rejoin Richard Cleave, the Confederate artillery officer, as he fights to regain his reputation and his honor. In the process, he experiences the battles of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, Kennesaw Mountain and others. Cleave can sense that the war is being lost; and he is torn between that knowledge and his sense of duty and honor. Through it all, Johnston’s attention to historical detail never falters as we are realistically propelled into Cleave’s fascinating world. Prominently featured also is Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, from whom Mary Johnston is descended. “Romances of the Civil War we have ad nauseum; but the war was no romance. In Cease Firing... we have the raw war itself.” The New York TimesSunday Review of Books

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Mary Johnston was born in 1870 in Buchanan, Virginia, the eldest child of Major John W. Johnston, a Confederate veteran whose family was connected with that of General Joseph E. Johnston and Elizabeth Alexander. A delicate child, educated by governesses and tutors, she lived at home until she was nineteen; browsing in her father’s library, she became an avid reader, particularly of history. She traveled in Europe and the Middle East with her widowed father and in 1893 moved to New York. During her four-year residence there she was bedridden, and in default of an active life she began to write. Her first novel, Prisoners of Hope, written to help the family financially, was little noticed; her second, To Have and to Hold, a romantic story of the Virginia Colony, sold more than half a million copies. Her third novel, Audrey, repeated this success. Although her subsequent work was less enthusiastically received, she was henceforth provided with an independent career. She never married. Upon her father’s death, she moved to Richmond and afterward to Three Hills, the house she built at Warm Springs, Virginia. There, after an operation, she died on May 9, 1936.In the United States the historical novel, largely because of its influence on major realistic writers, has earned a place of fairly high repute. In its own right, the genre has also received the approval of a large reading public and many authors have achieved commercial success. If the achievements of Mary Johnston do not now seem remarkable, the reason is that new generations have surpassed them; in the early twentieth century, they were extraordinary.Johnston will be remembered as a creator of historical verisimilitude and as a skillful narrator. Although she did not confine herself to American locales and events, she was at her best when depicting them. The Long Roll and its sequel, Cease Firing, are romances of the Civil War period. Her zeal in the cause of women’s rights prompted her two feminist novels, Hagar and The Wanderers. The heroine in Hagar is a financially successful southern writer; Hagar is widely considered her most interesting novel. Johnston’s socialist pacifism produced Foes, which was the first of a series of novels having mystical bearings, indebted in some measure to her interest in Buddhism; of these, the most noteworthy are Michael Forth and Sweet Rocket.