The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard: Volume 1 - Softcover

Conan Doyle, Arthur

9781496076663: The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard: Volume 1

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1496076664 ISBN 13: 9781496076663

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

View all copies of this ISBN edition

0 Used

1 New

From � 14.51

Brigadier Gerard is the hero of two series of comic short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle: “Exploits of Brigadier Gerard” (1896) and “Adventures of Brigadier Gerard” (1903). Owen Dudley Edwards has called them the finest series of historical short stories ever written. Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity – he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, most accomplished horseman and most gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong, since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending, Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French and – by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view – English manners and attitudes. Gerard tells the stories from the point of view of an old man now living in retirement in Paris. We discover that he was born in Gascony in the early 1780s. Gerard is modelled on the real-life Baron Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot, a noted French light cavalry officer during the Napoleonic Wars. Conan Doyle wrote with great affection about Marbot's memoirs in Through the Magic Door.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. Sent off to boarding school, he cut his teeth as a story-teller amusing his schoolmates with tales and writing letters home to his mother. He practiced medicine and, in 1900, volunteered as a medic in Africa during the Boer War he was later knighted for his service. Doyle lost a son, two brothers in law, and two nephews to the Great War. He is remembered for the Sherlock Holmes stories and his novel The Lost World.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.