Joyce Cary

A House of Children (1941) is the late English novelist Joyce Cary’s nearly autobiographical story of childhood summers spent in Donegal. Similar in spirit and structure to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel is a series of “epiphanies” experienced by a young boy, Evelyn. Nothing that could engage a youthful imagination is unworthy of mention: a day’s sail to the caves, midnight swims, or a ferry boat ride. In this engaging tale, Cary probes to the root of Evelyn’s relationship with his perpetually changing world. Bit by bit, Evelyn matures, until he is almost ready to enter that magical region ahead, inhabited by aunts, uncles, and other incomprehensible adults. This edition of A House of Children includes the author’s preface, previously unpublished in the U.S.

Joyce Cary (1888-1957) is indisputably one of the finest English novelists of this century. His reputation at his death equaled those of such contemporaries as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. His exuberant style allowed him to create a vivid array of men and women whose stories embody the conflicts of their day and whose characters are beautifully realized. Written in his last years, his “Second Trilogy” (Prisoner of Grace, Except the Lord, and Not Honour More) shows the mature Cary at his most brilliant, as he unfolds the tragicomedy of private lives compromised by politics and religion. While in his earlier trilogy (Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse’s Mouth) he pits the visionary artist against an indifferent but by no means dull world, in his masterful “Second Trilogy” he maps that gray landscape between good and evil where life is at its most dangerous. Prisoner of Grace (1952) introduces Nina Woodville and the two men in her troubled life: Chester Nimmo and Jim Latter, each in turn husband and lover. Nimmo is the quintessential hypocrite, a one-time evangelist, labor organizer, and pacifist who accepts the post of Minister of Production in the War Cabinet of 1914-18. Jim, Nina’s cousin, is a dogged army man, forced into the Nigerian service. Nina, orphaned and raised with Jim by a wealthy aunt, is married off to Nimmo, twenty years her senior, though she carries her cousin’s child. Nimmo’s rise to power, Jim’s African exile and return, and the dissolution of Nimmo’s marriage are told in Nina’s own voice. Earthy and full-blooded, both innocent and wise, we find in her a woman as sensual as Emma Bovary, as ravaged as Anna Karenina.

Joyce Cary (1888-1957) is indisputably one of the finest English novelists of this century. His reputation at his death equaled those of such contemporaries as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. His exuberant style allowed him to create a vivid array of men and women whose stories embody the conflicts of their day and whose characters are beautifully realized. Written in his last years, his “Second Trilogy” (Prisoner of Grace, Except the Lord, and Not Honour More) shows the mature Cary at his most brilliant, as he unfolds the tragicomedy of private lives compromised by politics and religion. While in his earlier trilogy (Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse’s Mouth) he pits the visionary artist against an indifferent but by no means dull world, in his masterful “Second Trilogy” he maps that gray landscape between good and evil where life is at its most dangerous. The concluding novel in Joyce Cary’s “Second Trilogy,” Not Honour More (1955) takes up at the point Prisoner of Grace (1952) ends. The setting is Palm Cottage, the remnant property of the Slapton-Latter family and now the scene of an unhappy ménage consisting of Captain Jim Latter (retired), his wife Nina (née Woodville), and her former husband, Chester Nimmo. It is 1926, the year of the General Strike. Nimmo, once a Cabinet Minister, sees the situation as his chance for a political comeback, while Jim, head of the emergency civilian police, feels it his duty to take his stand, however desperate, against “the grabbers and tapeworms… sucking the soul out of England.” For Nina, the trapped go-between, their inevitable clashes can lead nowhere but disaster. Not Honour More is Jim’s book, “my statement, so help me, as I hope to be hung.”

Joyce Cary (1888-1957) is indisputably one of the finest English novelists of this century. His reputation at his death equaled those of such contemporaries as Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. Written in his last years, his “Second Trilogy” (Prisoner of Grace, Except the Lord, and Not Honour More) shows the mature Cary at his most brilliant, as he unfolds the tragicomedy of private lives compromised by politics and religion. While in his earlier trilogy (Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim, and The Horse’s Mouth) he pits the visionary artist against an indifferent but by no means dull world, in his masterful “Second Trilogy” he maps that gray landscape between good and evil where life is at its most dangerous. The first volume (Prisoner of Grace, 1952) introduces Nina Woodville and the two men in her troubled life: Chester Nimmo and Jim Latter, each in turn husband and lover. Except the Lord (1953) is Chester Nimmo’s story, told in his own words. It is the tale, however, not of his fortuitous marriage into the local gentry and subsequent political success but of his childhood and youth in the West Country. Growing up amid the rural poverty and ignorance of mid-Victorian England, Nimmo, the son of a stableman and preacher, is forced at a young age to find a middle way between his evolving radical ideas and his deeply felt fundamentalism. In this affecting portrait, Joyce Cary throws open to question not so much the fad of Nimmo’s hypocrisy as the motive behind it. We come to understand him as a man dependent on and racked by his love of strong women, with his eyes looking ever toward heaven.