The Spring of the Ram (House of Niccolo, Book II) - Hardcover

Dunnett, Dorothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394564375 ISBN 13: 9780394564371

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1988

Synopsis

Set in sixteenth-century Europe, young Niccolo travels from Florence to Trebizond on the Black Sea, where the West and the Orient meet and where he finds both opportunity and danger

About this title

Review

"Always immaculate in her research, brilliant in character descriptions, [Dunnett's] is a style second to none." --The Washington Post Book World

"Like a literary Pieter Breughel, [Dunnett] reproduces history in all its grime and glory. . . . Nothing can prepare one for this novel's roller coaster ride of thrills." --The Christian Science Monitor

"The finest living writer of historical fiction"--The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Dorothy Dunnett was born in 1923 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. Her time at Gillespie's High School for Girls overlapped with that of the novelist Muriel Spark. From 1940-1955, she worked for the Civil Service as a press officer. In 1946, she married Alastair Dunnett, later editor of The Scotsman.

Dunnett started writing in the late 1950s. Her first novel, The Game of Kings, was published in the United States in 1961, and in the United Kingdom the year after. She published 22 books in total, including the six-part Lymond Chronicles and the eight-part Niccolo Series, and co-authored another volume with her husband. Also an accomplished professional portrait painter, Dunnett exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy on many occasions and had portraits commissioned by a number of prominent public figures in Scotland.

She also led a busy life in public service, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, a Trustee of the Scottish National War Memorial, and Director of the Edinburgh Book Festival. She served on numerous cultural committees, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1992 she was awarded the Office of the British Empire for services to literature. She died on November 9, 2001, at the age of 78.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394564375
• ISBN 13: 9780394564371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1