 First edition | |
| Author | A.E.W. Mason |
|---|---|
| Country | England, Gibraltar, Spain, Morocco |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Macmillan [1] |
Publication date | 1899 [1] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 312 [1] |
Miranda of the Balcony is a novel by the British writer A.E.W. Mason, first published 6 October 1899. [2] It has been called a modern re-telling of Homer's Odyssey and was one of the sources used by James Joyce for his 1922 novel Ulysses.
Ralph Warriner, a captain in the Royal Artillery, is stationed in the British garrison at Gibraltar, where he lives with his young wife Miranda whom he had married when she was 18. He is an unscruplous, bullying man with little interest in her. After being dismissed from the service, Warriner flees Gibraltar in his yacht, and disappears. Two years later the yacht is found wrecked in a storm off the Scilly Isles. A body is identified as Warriner's from the papers it carries, and Miranda is informed of her husband's demise. Her friends expect her to return to England, but she prefers to remain in seclusion in the Andalusian town of Ronda, a hundred miles north of Gibraltar.
Luke Charnock, a young railway engineer, is introduced to Miranda, still aged only 24, at a dinner at her cousin's home in London two years later, and both remember having briefly seen each other once before. The night before the dinner Charnock had seen a vision of Miranda's silently-pleading face in his dressing table mirror. They go out on the balcony to talk, and although Miranda will not admit it Charnock is convinced that she is in need of help. When he accidentally tears her glove he suggests that it could serve as a token: should she need assistance she can summon him by sending it.
Miranda is blackmailed by 'Major' Ambrose Wilbraham, who knows not only that Ralph Warriner had been dismissed for selling British secrets to a foreign power, but also that his death was faked and that he is still alive and engaged in illegal gun-running into Morocco.
In Tangier, Ralph Warriner is kidnapped by a blind moor named Hassan Akbar whom he had earlier betrayed, and is sold into slavery in the Moroccan interior. His friend, the wealthy Belgian Claude Fournier – who is Warriner's gun-running business partner – asks Miranda to arrange a rescue bid. Reluctantly she agrees, more because Warriner was the father of her young son Rupert, who had died in infancy and is buried at Gibraltar, than for Warriner's own sake. She sends Charnock a torn glove.
After searching Morocco for two years, Charnock finds the enslaved Warriner and rescues him. As they travel back, Warriner becomes jealous of Charnock and convinces himself that he still loves his wife. But Warriner and Miranda meet only briefly before Warriner (still needing to lie low to avoid being arrested for his crimes) leaves for good. Charnock threatens Wilbraham with a visit from the police if he does not leave Miranda alone.
Warriner is killed in a boating accident, but Charnock does not hear the news for a year afterwards. Invited again to dinner in London, he once more finds Miranda upon the balcony.
In a short 1903 review of three of Mason's early novels, Miranda of the Balcony, The Courtship of Morrice Buckler and The Philanderers, James Joyce noted similarities in the storylines: "the early, effaceable husband", the "previously-implicated girl of wayward habits" and "the sturdy, slow-witted Englishman". He found it "curious to watch this story reproducing itself without the author's assent, one imagines, through scenes and times differing so widely". The review concluded "The writing is often quite pretty, too. Isn't 'Miranda of the Balcony' a pretty name?" [3]
Writing in 1952, Mason's biographer Roger Lancelyn Green thought it a most readable story, excellently written and well put-together, but rather like a very pleasant dream that one really can't remember in the morning. [4] He noted that the first reviewers had had to confess "there is little to be said about it".
Jonathan R. Quick of the University of Massachusetts, however, had much more to say by 1985. In a paper in James Joyce Quarterly, Quick interpreted Joyce's concluding rhetorical question as a "sneering interrogative", but considered that Joyce had actually taken Mason far more seriously than his remarks might have suggested. [5] Miranda of the Balcony, he argued, is of particular interest as a modern rewriting of The Odyssey in a manner prefiguring Joyce's own Ulysses. He noted that Mason "broadly hints" at his purpose to make sure that readers would not miss the allusions, [6] and that he gives his characters multiple Homeric roles in the manner of the later Ulysses. [7] Also, both Mason and Joyce depart from Homer in a similar way – the invention of a dead son – with Rupert (Mason) suggesting Randolph (Joyce). [8] Finally, he noted that Miranda appears to be the only literary work known to Joyce that was set in Victorian Gibraltar, and from which he derived some of the scenes of Molly Bloom's recollections in Ulysses. [9]
In 1901 the novel was dramatized by Anne Crawford Flexner. The play had reasonable success in New York. [10]
In 1924 the story was turned into a silent film Slaves of Destiny directed by Maurice Elvey. [11]
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crew mates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.
Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement." According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking".
Molly Bloom is a fictional character in the 1922 novel Ulysses by James Joyce. The wife of main character Leopold Bloom, she roughly corresponds to Penelope in the Odyssey. The major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not. Molly is having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan. Molly, whose given name is Marion, was born in Gibraltar on 8 September 1870, the daughter of Major Tweedy, an Irish military officer, and Lunita Laredo, a Gibraltarian of Spanish descent. Molly and Leopold were married on 8 October 1888. She is the mother of Milly Bloom, who, at the age of 15, has left home to study photography. She is also the mother of Rudy Bloom, who died at the age of 11 days. In Dublin, Molly is an opera singer of some renown.
Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. He had a positive influence on his friend, C.S. Lewis, by encouraging him to publish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The House of the Arrow is a 1924 mystery novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, the third full-length novel featuring his recurring character Inspector Hanaud. It has inspired several films of the same title.
At the Villa Rose is a 1910 detective novel by the British writer A. E. W. Mason, the first to feature his character Inspector Hanaud. The story became Mason's most successful novel of his lifetime. It was adapted by him as a stage play in 1920, and was used as the basis for four film adaptions between 1920 and 1940.
The Prisoner in the Opal is a British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason, serialised in The Pall Mall Magazine and published in book form in 1928. It is the third full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series, and the only one to feature the occult as a significant plot point.
They Wouldn't Be Chessmen is a 1935 British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason. It is the fourth full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series.
The House in Lordship Lane is a 1946 British detective novel by A.E.W. Mason. It is the fifth and final full-length novel in Mason's Inspector Hanaud series, published when the author was eighty-one. Unlike the others in the series the story is largely set in England, the Lordship Lane of the title being a thoroughfare in East Dulwich, South London.
The Witness for the Defence is a 1913 mystery and adventure novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Considered one of Mason's best, it was adapted by the author from his 1911 stage play of the same name. In 1919 it was made into an American silent film The Witness for the Defense directed by George Fitzmaurice.
The Turnstile is a 1912 political novel by the English author A. E. W. Mason. The novel's fictional hero was based party upon the author's own experiences as a Member of parliament, and partly upon his friend Robert Falcon Scott, who at that time had yet to start out on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel is a 1917 detective novella by the British writer A. E. W. Mason featuring his character Inspector Hanaud. Mason had originally written many of the plot elements for an abortive silent film, to be called The Carnival Ball. The novella appeared between Mason's first full-length Hanaud novel, At the Villa Rose (1910), and his second, The House of the Arrow (1934).
The Summons is a 1920 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Set just before and during the Great War, the novel recounts the adventures of Martin Hillyard, a secret service agent, and his army officer friend Harry Luttrell who aims to restore the battered reputation of his regiment.
The Sapphire is a 1933 novel of mystery and adventure by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton.
The Three Gentlemen is a 1932 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, published by Hodder & Stoughton. It follows the story of a young couple in ancient Roman times whose love spans the centuries as they are reincarnated in the Elizabethan era, and finally in the early 20th century.
Musk and Amber is a 1942 adventure novel by A. E. W. Mason, set in Eighteenth-century England and Italy. It was his penultimate work, written at the age of 76, and has been considered his very best.
The Broken Road is a 1907 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, set in India during the period of British rule. It first appeared in serial form in The Cornhill Magazine. As a result of the book's publication, the British Government abolished a regulation that had prevented soldiers of the British Indian Army, no matter how valorous, from being eligible to receive the Victoria Cross.
The Dean's Elbow is a 1930 novel by the English novelist A. E. W. Mason, first serialised in Harper's Bazaar from October 1929.