Joan, the Curate
By FLORENCE WARDEN
308 pages, size 7½ × 5, cloth, 3 stampings, $1.00
The time of the story is 1748, its scene being along the seacoast of Sussex, England. The doings here of the “free-traders,” as they called themselves, or smugglers, as the government named them, had become so audacious that a revenue cutter with a smart young lieutenant in command, and a brigade of cavalry, were sent down to work together against the offenders. Everybody in the village seems engaged in evading the revenue laws, and the events are very exciting. Joan is the parson’s daughter, and so capable and useful in the parish that she is called “the curate.” She and the smart young lieutenant are the characters in a romance.—Book Notes, May, 1899.
The author of the once immensely popular “House on the Marsh” turns in her new story to the Sussex coast as it was in the middle of the last century. The time and the place will at once suggest smugglers to the observant reader, and, in truth, these gentry play an important part in the tale.—The Mail and Express, April 11, 1899.
Miss Florence Warden in “Joan, the Curate” (F. M. Buckles & Co.) tells an orthodox tale of smugglers in the last century with plenty of exciting adventures and no deviations from the accepted traditions of a familiar pattern in fiction.
—N. Y. Sun, May 6, 1899.
“Joan, the Curate” (Joan, a creamy-skinned, blackeyed maiden, gets her surname on account of the part she plays in helping her father, Parson Langley, with his duties), is a village tale of the smuggling days on the wild marsh coast of Kent and the equally lonely cliffs of Sussex. The village is a hot-bed of these daring “free-traders,” even the parson and his daughter are secretly in sympathy with them, and young Lieutenant Tregenna, who is in command of the revenue cutter sent to overawe the natives, has anything but a comfortable task to perform. His difficulties only increase when he falls in love with Joan and discovers her leanings towards the illegalities of the village, and when, at the same time, the audacious leader of the smugglers, Ann Price, who carries on her trade disguised as a man, falls in love with him herself, the complications are almost bewildering. The story moves through countless adventures, sanguinary fights, and lovers’ quarrels to the conventionally happy ending and the partial return of the fishermen to honest ways.
—Book News, May, 1899.
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