Skip to main content

Review: The Founding, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles


#1: Covers 1434-1483; the War of the Roses

The Founding is the first book in the Morland Dynasty series, covering the War of the Roses from 1434 to 1483. Robert Morland, heir to the Morland estate, marries Eleanor Courteney, thereby uniting money with a family name. Eleanor quickly becomes the family matriarch, staunchly supporting the Yorkists in the struggle for the English throne. The story of The Founding covers fifty years and five generations of the Morland family.

The series is truly addictive. It’s not great literature, by any means, but Cynthia Harrod-Eagles knows how to tell an entertaining story, and none of it is contrived. The Morland family in The Founding is closely aligned with the Plantagenets, following them right up through the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Also reviewed by: Medieval Bookworm
Labels:

Comments

Passages to the Past said…
I so need to start accumulating these and take on the task of reading them all!
January 28, 2009 at 9:05 AM
S. Krishna said…
I've never heard of these, but they sound interesting!
January 28, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Michele said…
I jotted this one down on my wishlist a couple of weeks ago, but haven't found this first one start the series. These books have been popping up in reviews recently and I'm so glad....a new series (to me, at least)!
January 28, 2009 at 12:34 PM
Marg said…
I have this first one out from the library to read soon. I don't know what I am thinking of starting a series this long, but never mind! We will soldier on regardless.
January 28, 2009 at 6:08 PM
Cathy said…
This is a marvelous series. I pace myself so that I'm never waiting for the newest to be published!
February 1, 2009 at 9:29 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...
115 comments
Read more

2015 Reading

January 1. The Vanishing Witch, by Karen Maitland 2. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen 3. Texts From Jane Eyre, by Mallory Ortberg 4. Brighton Rock, by Graham Green 5. Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey 6. Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert 7. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy 8. A Movable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway 9. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf 10. Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote 11. Maggie-Now, by Betty Smith February 1. Middlemarch, by George Eliot 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 3. Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate, by Cynthia Lee 4. Music For Chameleons, by Truman Capote 5. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious 6. Unrequited, by Lisa Phillips 7. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh 8. A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather March 1. Persuasion, by Jane Austen 2. Love With a Chance of Drowning, by Torre DeRoche 3. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 4. Miss Buncle's Book, by DE Stevenson 5. One Hundred Yea...
5 comments
Read more