The Market-Place

The Market-Place – Harold Frederic

“The Market-Place” throbs with the hum of life, and the wild, mad chorus of the market-place rises from its pages crescendo to a tremendous finale. To transfer the “city” to the printed page is a wonderful achievement. In “The Market-Place” his multitudinous, extravagant, corrupt, but extraordinarily fascinating “city” lives, moves and has its being. Harold Frederic must have had intimate acquaintance with its secrets, for there is not an impossible incident in his novel, and much is a transcript from reality. To many this book will seem the wildest of extravaganzas, a romance of the realms of Zenda—a stirring, exciting romance, too. To those who possess the key to the book, it is a ruthless exposure, a merciless satire. Both as satire and romance it is splendid reading.

The Market-Place

The Market-Place

The Market-Place.

ISBN: 9783849681814

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

Biography of Harold Frederic (from Wikipedia):

Frederic was born in Utica, New York, to Presbyterian parents. After his father was killed in a railroad accident when Frederic was 18 months old, the boy was raised primarily by his mother. He finished school at age fifteen, and soon began work as a photographer. For four years he was a photographic touch-up artist in his hometown and in Boston. In 1875, he began work as a proofreader for the newspaper The Utica Herald and then The Utica Daily Observer. Frederic later became a reporter. Frederic married Grace Green Williams in 1877, and they had five children together. By 1882 he was editor of the newspaper The Albany Evening Journal in the state capital.

In 1884 Frederic went to live in England as London correspondent of the New York Times, and worked at this position for the rest of his life. He brought his family to London by 1889. Afterward he met Kate Lyon, who became his mistress. Frederic and Lyon established a second household, living openly together; and they had three illegitimate children.

Frederic wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (1896), better known by its American title, The Damnation of Theron Ware; followed by Gloria Mundi (1898), that his talent as a novelist was fully realized. Critic Jonathan Yardley called Damnation “a minor classic of realism”.

Kate Lyon was a Christian Scientist.Frederic suffered a stroke in 1898. After his death, she was tried on charges of manslaughter brought by his wife Grace Frederic, and acquitted at trial.

 

(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

 

Publisher’s Note: This book is printed and distributed by Createspace a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC and is typically not available anywhere else than in stores owned and operated by Amazon or Createspace.

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