Princes in the Land
208pp
ISBN 9781903155530
First published in 1938, Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan has the same theme as PB no. 41, Hostages to Fortune, a great Persephone favourite: it too is about a woman bringing up a family who is left at the end, when the children are on the verge of adulthood, asking herself not only what it was all for but what was her own life for? Yet the questions are asked subtly and readably.
Having shown us how everything is made bearable for Patricia if her children can be at the centre of her life and, more importantly, (because she is not a selfish woman) if they grow up to fulfil her ideals, Joanna Cannan proceeds to show us her happiness being slowly destroyed. The tragedy of the book is that not only do none of the three children live up to their mother’s expectations, she has to watch as each of them takes a path that is anathema to her. Yet of course, she can do nothing about it; nor, sensibly, does she try.
Joanna Cannan began writing early, and her first novel was published when she was 26. From 1922 onwards she published a book a year for nearly forty years – novels, detective novels (including the very successful Death at The Dog, which is still in print in America) and the first ‘pony’ book (first in the sense that the focus was on a pony-mad girl rather than a horse or pony), a genre that her daughters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson were to make very much their own. Princes in the Land has a thematic bite that Persephone readers will find hard to forget; it is also evocative about Oxford.
For more on Princes in the Land, have a look at the Persephone Perspective.
Endpaper
'Horse's Head' a 1938-9 screen-printed linen by Lucienne Day is the fabric used for Princes in the Land (1938), a novel in which horses are a leitmotif. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London/ Design © Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation
Picture Caption
'The Breakfast Table' by Harold Knight, 1927
208pp
ISBN 9781903155530
First published in 1938, Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan has the same theme as PB no. 41, Hostages to Fortune, a great Persephone favourite: it too is about a woman bringing up a family who is left at the end, when the children are on the verge of adulthood, asking herself not only what it was all for but what was her own life for? Yet the questions are asked subtly and readably.
Having shown us how everything is made bearable for Patricia if her children can be at the centre of her life and, more importantly, (because she is not a selfish woman) if they grow up to fulfil her ideals, Joanna Cannan proceeds to show us her happiness being slowly destroyed. The tragedy of the book is that not only do none of the three children live up to their mother’s expectations, she has to watch as each of them takes a path that is anathema to her. Yet of course, she can do nothing about it; nor, sensibly, does she try.
Joanna Cannan began writing early, and her first novel was published when she was 26. From 1922 onwards she published a book a year for nearly forty years – novels, detective novels (including the very successful Death at The Dog, which is still in print in America) and the first ‘pony’ book (first in the sense that the focus was on a pony-mad girl rather than a horse or pony), a genre that her daughters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson were to make very much their own. Princes in the Land has a thematic bite that Persephone readers will find hard to forget; it is also evocative about Oxford.
For more on Princes in the Land, have a look at the Persephone Perspective.
Endpaper
'Horse's Head' a 1938-9 screen-printed linen by Lucienne Day is the fabric used for Princes in the Land (1938), a novel in which horses are a leitmotif. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London/ Design © Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation
Picture Caption
'The Breakfast Table' by Harold Knight, 1927
Original: $53.68
-65%$53.68
$18.79Description
208pp
ISBN 9781903155530
First published in 1938, Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan has the same theme as PB no. 41, Hostages to Fortune, a great Persephone favourite: it too is about a woman bringing up a family who is left at the end, when the children are on the verge of adulthood, asking herself not only what it was all for but what was her own life for? Yet the questions are asked subtly and readably.
Having shown us how everything is made bearable for Patricia if her children can be at the centre of her life and, more importantly, (because she is not a selfish woman) if they grow up to fulfil her ideals, Joanna Cannan proceeds to show us her happiness being slowly destroyed. The tragedy of the book is that not only do none of the three children live up to their mother’s expectations, she has to watch as each of them takes a path that is anathema to her. Yet of course, she can do nothing about it; nor, sensibly, does she try.
Joanna Cannan began writing early, and her first novel was published when she was 26. From 1922 onwards she published a book a year for nearly forty years – novels, detective novels (including the very successful Death at The Dog, which is still in print in America) and the first ‘pony’ book (first in the sense that the focus was on a pony-mad girl rather than a horse or pony), a genre that her daughters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson were to make very much their own. Princes in the Land has a thematic bite that Persephone readers will find hard to forget; it is also evocative about Oxford.
For more on Princes in the Land, have a look at the Persephone Perspective.
Endpaper
'Horse's Head' a 1938-9 screen-printed linen by Lucienne Day is the fabric used for Princes in the Land (1938), a novel in which horses are a leitmotif. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London/ Design © Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation
Picture Caption
'The Breakfast Table' by Harold Knight, 1927
