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Enchantment

E[rnest] Temple Thurston

E. Temple Thurston (1879-1933) was a British poet, playwright and author. He moved to live in Ireland when he was 10 years old and at 15 y, joined his father's brewery business. His first verse was published in the Cork Examiner. He travelled to London to try to make a living as a writer but worked in a yeast factory and then as a journalist. He wrote more than 30 popular novels, one of which, written when he was 17 y, argued against celibacy for priests. In 1901 he married Katherine Cecil Madden who wrote six novels between 1903 and 1910. They divorced in 1910. Thurston was married to two other women.

This novel is the story of an alcoholic Irish squire who puts his daughter into a convent. The Illustrated London News described the book as a romance of the Irish gentry, down Waterford way while The Pall Mall Gazette reported Mr Thurston spins his yarn in the true manner of romance in a style sparkling with felicitous bravado. But the figures of this drama are no puppets, but real flesh and blood, and they rivet our attention and claim our regard.

In 1916 Blampied had designed a jacket for the first edition of Thurston's novel The Five Barred Gate, published by Hodder & Stoughton.

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Dust jacket (click to enlarge)

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