Daniel Defoe - Memoirs of a Cavalier: "If God much strong, much might, as the devil, why God not kill the devil, so make him no more wicked?"

by Daniel Defoe

Book Overview

Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) is a work of historical fiction by Daniel Defoe, set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil Wars. The full title, which bore no date, was:Memoirs of a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1787374084
• ISBN13: 9781787374089
• Release Date: July 2017
• Publisher: Horse's Mouth
• Length: 154 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Daniel Defoe

This is obviously one of Defoe's more obscure works. Part I begins in 1630. A young English nobleman, a second son, though his father's favorite, decides to see something of the world and begins traveling on the continent with a friend. He signs on with the troops of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, who's aiding German Protestants against, I think, the Catholics. This ten-year period occurs near the end of the Thirty Years War. My knowledge of seventeenth-century European history is practically nonexistent, so I didn't really understand the issues involved and didn't learn much more from this book.In Part II, our nameless hero returns to England, where the Civil War between the Cavaliers (the king's troops) and the Roundheads (Puritans) is about to get underway. (It was at the end of the Civil War that Charles I was beheaded, after which the Commonwealth took over for eleven years until the restoration of Charles II in 1660.) I thought this part might be more interesting, as I do know something about English history, and it was.Like A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, this book, too, has a fictional narrator in a historical setting. If you like Defoe, you will not dislike this book. If you don't like Defoe, this book won't change your mind.