A Monk of Fife

This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

The book: The recent revival of interest in the Maid of Orleans has resulted in the production of a considerable amount of romantic fiction, of which the most important example is Mr. Lang’s » A Monk of Fife.» The subject is one almost ideally suited to Mr. Lang’s hand, appealing, as it does, to his deepest interests and intellectual sympathies – how warmly the noble poem in his latest volume of verse may witness. The romance before us pretends to be a translation of a French manuscript in the Ratisbons Scots College. Whether this pretence be wholly a bit of mystification we are not concerned to inquire; for all practical purposes «A Monk of Fife» is an original work of Mr. Lang’s imagination, although it follows historical fact more closely than such fiction is wont to do. As to the style of the book, it may be described, in Mr. Lang’s own words, as «not imitating, in manner, the almost contemporary English of the ‘ Paston Letters,’ or the somewhat earlier English style of the Regent Bedford, but merely attempting to give a moderately old air to his (Mr. Lang’s) version of a French – which, genuine or imitative, is certainly, in character and spelling, antique.» The story is told in the first person, and is essentially the narrative of a young Scotsman, fleeing from his own country in consequence of a brawl, and finding service with the French at such a time as to be concerned in the siege of Orleans, and to become closely associated with the fortunes of the Maid. The narrative is at times labored, as the result of a wish to omit no historical fact of importance, but is for the most part highly readable, giving a vivid impression of the stirring life of early fifteenth-century France.