The Best Works of Robert Neilson StephensA Gentleman PlayerAn Enemy to the KingPhilip WinwoodThe Bright Face of DangerThe Continental DragoonThe Mystery of Murray DavenportThe Road to Paris

A little before noon one gray day in September, 1746, a well-made young fellow, in appearance and fact a gentleman’s servant, rode up the High Street of a town in the North of England, and through the passageway of an inn to the yard. Having entrusted his sorrel nag to an ostler, he hastened to the kitchen, and proceeded to give orders to the landlady with an absence of deference which plainly showed that he spoke not for himself but for his master. There are still a few English inns not u...

Hitherto I have written with the sword, after the fashion of greater men, and requiring no secretary. I now take up the quill to set forth, correctly, certain incidents which, having been noised about, stand in danger of being inaccurately reported by some imitator of Brantome and De l'Estoile. If all the world is to know of this matter, let it know thereof rightly. It was early in January, in the year 1578, that I first set out for Paris. My mother had died when I was twelve years old, an...

The night set in with heavy and unceasing rain, and, though the month was August, winter itself could not have made the streets less inviting than they looked to Thomas Larcher. Having dined at the caterer's in the basement, and got the damp of the afternoon removed from his clothes and dried out of his skin, he stood at his window and gazed down at the reflections of the lights on the watery asphalt. The few people he saw were hastening laboriously under umbrellas which guided torrents do...

'Tis not the practice of writers to choose for biography men who have made no more noise in the world than Captain Winwood has; nor the act of gentlemen, in ordinary cases, to publish such private matters as this recital will present. But I consider, on the one hand, that Winwood's history contains as much of interest, and as good an example of manly virtues, as will be found in the life of many a hero more renowned; and, on the other, that his story has been so partially known, and so dis...

If, on the first Tuesday in June, in the year 1608, anybody had asked me on what business I was riding towards Paris, and if I had answered, "To cut off the moustaches of a gentleman I have never seen, that I may toss them at the feet of a lady who has taunted me with that gentleman's superiorities,"—if I had made this reply, I should have been taken for the most foolish person on horseback in France that day. Yet the answer would have been true, though I accounted myself one of the wisest...

In the Jacobite army that followed Prince Charlie and shared defeat with him at Culloden in 1746, were some who escaped hanging at Carlisle or elsewhere by fleeing to Scottish ports and obtaining passage over the water. A few, like the Young Chevalier himself, fled to the continent of Europe; but some crossed the ocean and made new lives for themselves in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other provinces. Two of these refugees, tarrying not in the thickly settled strip of country along the Atlan...

At three o'clock in the afternoon of the cold first Monday in March, 1601, a red flag rose, and a trumpet sounded thrice, from a little gabled turret protruding up out of a large wooden building in a field in that part of Southwark known as the Bankside and bordering on the Thames west of London Bridge. This rude edifice, or enclosure, was round (not like its successor, hexagonal) in shape; was in great part roofless; was built on a brick and stone foundation, and was encircled by a ditch ...

There were reasons why such a group, on that road at that time, was an unusual sight,—reasons familiar to any one who is well informed in the history of the Revolution. Unfortunately, most good Americans are better acquainted with the French Revolution than with our own, know more about the state of affairs in Rome during the reign of Nero than about the condition of things in New York City during the British occupation, and compensate for their knowledge of Scotch-English border warfare i...

When Jack Morrow returned from the World's Fair, he found Philadelphia thermometers registering 95. The next afternoon he boarded a Chestnut Street car, got out at Front Street, hurried to the ferry station, and caught a just departing boat for Camden, and on arriving at the other side of the Delaware, made haste to find a seat in the well-filled express train bound for Atlantic City. While he was being whirled across the level surface of New Jersey, past the cornfields and short stretches...

The story revolves around Georgiana, a young and spirited woman of noble birth who finds herself entangled in a web of political intrigue and romantic entanglements. The novel captures the tension between the Jacobite supporters and the ruling Hanoverian government during the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion.Georgiana's life takes a dramatic turn when she is forced to flee from her home due to a perilous situation involving both her family's loyalty and her personal safety. She is pursu...

"Philip Winwood: A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence" is a novel penned by Robert Neilson Stephens. It offers a narrative that blends historical fiction with elements of domestic drama, set against the backdrop of the American Revolutionary War.The story likely follows the life of Philip Winwood, an American captain who finds himself embroiled in the events of the War of Independence. While the war serves as a pivotal backdrop, the focus of th...