Williamsburg

Elswyth Thane is best-known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. Dawn's Early Light is the first novel in the series. In it, colonial Williamsburg comes alive. Thane centers her novel around four major characters: the aristocratic St. John Sprague, who becomes George Washington's aide; Regina Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoilt by a season in London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from England on the eve of the war and thought of himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an indigent mother. But we also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene, Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that brilliant galaxy not as historical figures but as men and women. We see de Kalb's gallant death under a cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate Marion's swamp-encircled stronghold on the Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis and Lafayette. Dawn's Early Light is the human story behind our first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and laughing through it to the dawn of a better world.

This is the first and best in Thane's famous "Williamsburg" series of historical fiction.

In this second book of the Williamsburg series Yankee Stranger, Tabitha Day, heroine of "Dawn's Early Light", re-appears on her 95th birthday, an altogether delectable and beguiling grandmother and great-grandmother. The period spans the Civil War, the setting is largely Williamsburg and Richmond, and the battlefields. The Spragues and the Days have again inter-married, and one tragedy comes out of it when young Sue and her double first cousin are forbidden permission to marry. But the story is primarily that of Cabot Murray, "Yankee stranger", journalist, war correspondent on the wrong side, and Eden - of love at first sight. Eden can forgive his profession, accept his place of birth, but when she finds him a "spy", she tries to wipe out her love. But, in vein - and Cabot wins through. Delightfully drawn picture of civilian life behind the Civil War front - not too prettified but real.

This is Volume 3 of The Williamsburg Series. In Ever After, Bracken Murray visits London during the Jubilee summer of 1897 after his wife deserts him. Here he falls in love with an English girl. Meanwhile, back in the USA his cousin Fitz rescues a music-hall singer who falls in love with him. Elswyth Thane has successfully held the interest in this third and fourth generation story, and in the use of the Spanish-American war background she has once again sustained her pattern of war as a leavening force. Many familiar figures cross the pages, but the canvas has wider ranch, Williamsburg, New York, London, and county England as well as grim scenes in Cuba's battlegrounds.

The Light Heart, the fourth installment in Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg series, covers the years 1902 to 1917. The reader enjoys these stories of the Days and the Spragues families in this saga series of novels, in successive generations, as one might the Whitecaks of Jalna series. The last novel bridged the Atlantic, with two inter-marriages, so now this next one again is set partly in Williamsburg, partly in New York, partly in London (and briefly in central Europe). This time World War I provides the background, while England of two coronations - Edward VII and George V - spans the story. Once again it is a story of the Spragues and the Days, and now their English connections, Phoebe, cousin (and niece) of Cousin Sue is heading into a situation of being "lost for love". Cousin Sue finds a way to rescue her from a childlike devotion to "poor Cousin Miles" - and sends her abroad, only to the love for Oliver, despite his engagement to the jealous Maia. So, Phoebe goes back to marry her Miles and finds she can't go through with it. A war takes her back to Europe, with intention to rescue Rosalind from her German Prince - and again she finds in Oliver the same overwhelming love. Lovely Phoebe Sprague, of Williamsburg, Virginia, though still engaged, falls in love with Captain Oliver Campion. But, in 1902, a betrothal was almost as binding as marriage? Is it too late?

Volume 5 of The Williamsburg Series. This is the adventures of the twins Calvert and Camilla Scott from the First World War through 1934. Both of them go overseas, Camilla to act as nurse's aide in the hospitals run by her cousins in London and Gloucestershire. Calvert to serve briefly on the crew of a big gun. Chiefly it is Camilla's story, her futile love for a Frenchman, her involvement in the stormy passions of Jenny and the American who - with Calvert - had managed to survive the destruction of the gun crew, and who nearly lost his life thereafter. The threads of previous stories are fitted into place, gathering momentum, seeming to build up into a love story between the duke's daughter and the poor mechanic. And, in the last quarter, death and disaster, a brief interlude between Camilla and a young Nazi, and the story ends with two matings, and the build-up for World War II.

The sixth volume in the Williamsburg series, this is a satisfying return to the Spragues and the Days - again from Williamsburg and New York, to London and Farthingale. The best of the series, since The Light Heart, a good yarn with pace and momentum, and a gratifying gathering up of the threads in the years leading up to World War II. Sue has gone, Jeff is her heir, the surviving male Day. And the story interest shifts back and forth from Jeff, fearful that a bad heart will play him false, and Sylvia, his cousin, willing to take that chance, to Evadne, caught in the meshes of Moral Rearmament, Hermione, difficult and unpleasant as ever (or more so) and Sylvia's brother, Stephen, who loves Evadne on sight, but finds her intractable and headstrong during a difficult year and more. There's a feel of England on verge of war, and one mad sortie into a fanatical Germany, where Evadne goes on a "mission". But, the main lure of the story lies in meeting again the wide-flung members of an attractive family.