Other editions of book Prester John

Buchan's 100 works include nearly thirty novels, seven collections of short stories, and biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Caesar Augustus, and Oliver Cromwell. Buchan was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of the Marquess of Montrose, but the most famous of his books were the spy thrillers, and it is for these that he is now best remembered. The "last Buchan" (as Graham Greene entitled his appreciative review) was the 1941 novel Sick Heart River (American title: Mountain Meadow), in which a dying protagonist confronts the questions of the meaning of life in the Canadian wilderness. The insightful quotation, "It's a great life, if you don't weaken," is famously attributed to Buchan, as is, "No great cause is ever lost or won, The battle must always be renewed, And the creed must always be restated."Tweedsmuir Provincial Park in British Columbia, now divided into Tweedsmuir South Provincial Park and Tweedsmuir North Provincial Park and Protected Area, was created in 1938 to commemorate Buchan's 1937 visit to the Rainbow Range and other nearby areas by horseback and floatplane. In the foreword to a booklet published to commemorate his visit, he wrote, "I have now travelled over most of Canada and have seen many wonderful things, but I have seen nothing more beautiful and more wonderful than the great park which British Columbia has done me the honour to call by my name".

Prester John is an adventure novel by John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John. Crawfurd is similar in many ways to Buchan's later character, Richard Hannay. The legends of Prester John were popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, and told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy. Prester John was reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. His kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates of Alexander and the Fountain of Youth, and even bordered the Earthly Paradise. Among his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen, the fabled original from which the "speculum literature" of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance was derived, in which the prince's realms were surveyed and his duties laid out.

John Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) was a Scottish novelist and public servant who combined a successful career as an author of thrillers, historical novels, histories and biographies with a parallel career in public life. At the time of his death he was Governor-General of Canada. Buchan was born in Scotland and educated at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After a brief career in law he went to South Africa in 1902 where he contributed to the reconstruction of the country following the Boer War. His love for South Africa is a recurring theme in his fiction.On returning to Britain, Buchan built a successful career in publishing with Nelsons and Reuters. During the first world war, he was Director of Information in the British government. He wrote a twenty-four volume history of the war, which was later abridged.Alongside his busy public life, Buchan wrote superb action novels, including the spy-catching adventures of Richard Hannay, whose exploits are described in The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep.Apart from Hannay, Buchan created two other leading characters in Dickson McCunn, the shrewd retired grocer who appears in Huntingtower, Castle Gay, and The House of the Four Winds; and the lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, who features in the The Power-House,John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain and Sick Heart River.From 1927 to 1935 Buchan was Conservative M.P. for the Scottish Universities, and in 1935, on his appointment as Governor-General to Canada, he was made a peer, taking the title Baron Tweedsmuir. During these years he was still productive as a writer, and published notable historical biographies, such as Montrose, Sir Walter Scott, and Cromwell.When he died in Montreal in 1940, the world lost a fine statesman and story-teller.

Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to seek his fortune as a store-keeper. On the voyage he encounters John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John. David's courage and his understanding of this man take him to the heart of the uprising, a secret cave in the Rooirand. This is a story of lost civilizations, hidden treasures, friendship and betrayal, lions and tigers, witch doctors, and just good old-fashioned adventure. John Buchan wrote Prester John, his sixth novel, in 1910, seven years after he returned from South Africa. It was his first to reach a wide readership across the world, and it established him as the writer of the fast-paced adventures for which he is famous. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 6-by-9-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with their play. The town of Kirkcaple, of which and its adjacent parish of Portincross my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above the little bay of Caple, and looks squarely out on the North Sea. Round the horns of land which enclose the bay the coast shows on either side a battlement of stark red cliffs through which a burn or two makes a pass to the water's edge. The bay itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we lads of the burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among the cliffs; for there there were many deep caves and pools, where podleys might be caught with the line, and hid treasures sought for at the expense of the skin of the knees and the buttons of the trousers. Many a long Saturday I have passed in a crinkle of the cliffs, having lit a fire of driftwood, and made believe that I was a smuggler or a Jacobite new landed from France. There was a band of us in Kirkcaple, lads of my own age, including Archie Leslie, the son of my father's session-clerk, and Tam Dyke, the provost's nephew. We were sealed to silence by the blood oath, and we bore each the name of some historic pirate or sailorman. I was Paul Jones, Tam was Captain Kidd, and Archie, need I say it, was Morgan himself. Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea. There we forgathered in the summer evenings and of a Saturday afternoon in winter, and told mighty tales of our prowess and flattered our silly hearts. But the sober truth is that our deeds were of the humblest, and a dozen of fish or a handful of apples was all our booty, and our greatest exploit a fight with the roughs at the Dyve tan-work. My father's spring Communion fell on the last Sabbath of April, and on the particular Sabbath of which I speak the weather was mild and bright for the time of year. I had been surfeited with the Thursday's and Saturday's services, and the two long diets of worship on the Sabbath were hard for a lad of twelve to bear with the spring in his bones and the sun slanting through the gallery window. There still remained the service on the Sabbath evening—a doleful prospect, for the Rev. Mr Murdoch of Kilchristie, noted for the length of his discourses, had exchanged pulpits with my father. So my mind was ripe for the proposal of Archie Leslie, on our way home to tea, that by a little skill we might give the kirk the slip. At our Communion the pews were emptied of their regular occupants and the congregation seated itself as it pleased. The manse seat was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr Murdoch, who had been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it was not hard to obtain permission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in the cock-loft in the gallery. Word was sent to Tam, and so it happened that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate and took their seats in the cock-loft. But when the bell had done jowing, and we heard by the sounds of their feet that the elders had gone in to the kirk, we slipped down the stairs and out of the side door. We were through the churchyard in a twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn. It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their boys into what were known as Eton suits—long trousers, cut-away jackets, and chimney-pot hats. I had been one of the earliest victims, and well I remember how I fled home from the Sabbath school with the snowballs of the town roughs rattling off my chimney-pot. Archie had followed, his family being in all things imitators of mine.

Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to work as a storekeeper. On the voyage he encounters again John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories.In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John.

Provenance; from the personal library of Professor Lloyd Austin, University of Manchester. Physical description; 245 pages. Summary; Nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd travels from Scotland to South Africa to work as a storekeeper. On the voyage he encounters again John Laputa, the celebrated Zulu minister, of whom he has strange memories. In his remote store David finds himself with the key to a massive uprising, led by the minister, who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king, Prester John. David's courage and his understanding of this man take him to the heart of the uprising, a secret cave in the Rooirand. John Buchan wrote Prester John , his sixth novel, in 1910, seven years after he himself returned from South Africa. It was his first to reach a wide readership across the world, and it established him as the writer of fast-paced adventures for which he is famous. In this, the only critical edition, David Daniell shows what went into the making of Prester John and explores what sets it apart from the boys' yarns of the period. This book is intended for students on courses about the early Adventure Novel. Students on courses about Commonwealth literature/history. Subjects; Zulu (African people) - Fiction. Clergy - South Africa - Fiction. Scots - South Africa - Fiction. Adventure / thriller. Modern fiction ; Novels, other prose & writers. Literary studies: from (c 1900 -). English. Fiction / General.

Prester John tells the tale of John Laputa, a celebrated Zulu minister who has taken the title of the mythical priest-king Prester John. We see the story through the eyes of nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd, a young Scot in South Africa working as a storekeeper: Crawfurd he finds himself at the heart of a massive uprising of the people -- and holding the key to Prester John's secret. (Jacketless library hardcover.)

John Buchan is mostly known for his The Thirty-Nine Steps, one of the best spy and adventure novels of the first half of the 20th century, but Prester John is not less remarkable. Written and published in 1910, the book is the first of Buchan’s novels set in South Africa and an extraordinary, adventurous story.The protagonist of the story is David Crawfurd, a young Scotsman who grew up by the North Sea where he met his enemy, a man called Laputa. Later on, he is sent by his uncle to South Africa to become an assistant storekeeper and during the time he spends in the South African backwaters, he discovers a plot to overthrow the rule of the British Empire and is confronted with a violent and massive Zulu uprising, threatening to kill all white settlers in the area. Strangely, Crawfurd takes part in the conflict on both sides, an aspect that gives the author the opportunity to present both sides of the rebellion, the side of the colonizers just as much as the side of those being colonized.Given the title, one would expect the novel to be about Prester John, the legendary ruler of the East, a Christian king-priest who was the hero of numerous medieval legends as the defendant of Christianity and of the power of the Emperor against the Muslims. Crawfurd’s character bears some symbolic resemblance to the character of Prester John, making the adventure-packed plot even more complex and even more exciting.Buchan was fascinated with South Africa. Prester John is certainly the most fascinating of all his stories set in this magical area of the Dark Continent, but if you liked this one, you will certainly want some more. Luckily, Buchan was a very prolific writer, with more than 100 novels and short stories in his inventory, so you will certainly find what you are looking for.