This Publican

This Publican is a 1938 novel by the English author Dornford Yates (Cecil William Mercer).
It was first serialised in Woman's Journal (November 1937 to March 1938, as She Knew Not Mercy, illustrated by Forster).
It was published in the US under the title The Devil in Satin.[2]

This Publican
1938 dustjacket
AuthorDornford Yates
GenreNovel
PublisherWard Lock & Co[1]
Publication date
1938[1]
Media typePrint
Pages320[1]

Plot

The dreadful Rowena has married the serious-minded and naive young barrister David Bohun. She treats him abominably, and is at the end of the book unmasked as an imposter and murderer who has used Bohun as a stepping stone to better things.

Background

Mercer’s autobiographer AJ Smithers, writing in 1982, noted “a school of thought” that holds this book to be Mercer’s revenge upon his first wife, Bettine, as a fictionalised account of their marriage. This he considered to be untenable for a variety of reasons including the lack of any possible resemblance between Mercer's first wife and the villain, the lack of similarity of events, and the fact that the author was very happily remarried by the time he wrote the book and would hardly have waited years to reopen any old wound.[3]

Yates himself said that Rowena "combined the worst characteristics of three women that I did know." [4]

Critical reception
1938 US edition (Doubleday,Doran)

Readers did not share Mercer's own high opinion of the book.[5]

The original dustjacket had the following quote -

  • Sunday Times - "An extraordinarily readable story, with the interest sustained from beginning to end."

References
  1. "British Library Item details". primocat.bl.uk. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  2. Macdonald, Kate (2015). Novelists Against Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 226. ISBN 978-1137457714.
  3. Smithers 1982, pp. 169-170.
  4. Yates, Dornford (1952). As Berry And I Were Saying. London: Ward Lock & Co. p. 43.
  5. Smithers 1982, p. 170.

Bibliography
  • Smithers, AJ (1982). Dornford Yates. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0 340 27547 2.
  • Usborne, Richard (1974). Clubland Heroes. London: Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 0 214 20012 4.
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