Ref: IE0086
ISBN: 1-84630-244-7
Republished here on fully-searchable CD-Rom are The Military Novels of Charles Lever featuring his character Charley O'Malley. Originally collected and published in two volumes in 1841 and republished in 1872 by the author, this republication is number 74 of a limited edition of 250 published in Boston in 1891. In total, the two volumes contain more than 1,100 printed pages recording the antics of Charles O'Malley and his associates, the most popular serialised short stories in early Victorian Britain.
Charles James Lever (1806-1872) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. After travelling in Europe and Canada, Lever returned to Dublin to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons and began life as a practising physician when he was appointed the dispensary doctor at Portstewart, Co. Derry. Here he met William Hamilton Maxwell whose Wild Sports of the West, published in 1832, inspired Lever to write his own military novels. The first of these was The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, which was serialised from February 1837 in the recently established Dublin University Magazine. These portray the comic adventures of Harry Lorrequer and his army colleagues in Ireland during the Napoleonic period. In 1839 Lever moved to Brussels, where as a practising physician he wrote and published Charles O'Malley (1841), considered with The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer to be Lever's best work. 'Written under the spur of the writer's chronic extravagance, contain some splendid military writing and some of the most animated battle-pieces on record' and were said to have been avidly read, by amongst others, the Duke of Wellington. Lever was appointed to a number of vice-consulships, the last being in Trieste, in 1871, from were Lever reissued this collection of The Military Novels featuring Charles O'Malley.
The Military Novels of Charles Lever featuring Charles O'Malley are illustrated by Halbot Knight Browne, better known as 'Phiz', the illustrator of many of Charles Dickens' novels. Republished here on fully-searchable CD-Rom, as a two-volume set, this publication is not to be missed.
