The Broad Highway  ‡

Above: cover and illustrations by C. E. Brock from the 1912 edition

UK Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd. (London). First published 1910

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eBook at unz.org

Review from Newport Vintage Books

A Romance of Kent.

"The time of the tale is the early nineteenth century, the scene rural England, and the hero, one Peter Vibart, who tells his own history most engagingly. Disinherited, as he believes, by his uncle, Peter sets forth on the "Broad Highway" in search of a livelihood and of adventure. The first he finds as blacksmith in a Kentish village, the second rushes upon him in various and startling forms. Love comes to meet him, too, and he tells of it with an amusing, careful candor that recalls Blackmore's hero, John Ridd. In fact, the whole story suggests Lorna Doone, but the resemblance is vague enough to be pleasant.

More charming than the narrative, however, are the detached descriptive passages sketching the travelers met by Peter on the road, and the quaint rural types of his later experience. The author has rare powers of character-photography." manybooks.net

"This swashbuckling novel of the highroads of Kent in the Regency era catapulted Farnol to fame, and is worthily regarded a Classic to this day. It was written in a style intended to invoke the tone of the literature & the conversations of the Regency period, very playful with language." Jessica Amanda Salmonson