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Article: Captain From Castile; Samuel Shellabarger, 1945
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- June 18, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Chosen by Thomas M. Disch, a novelist, poet and critic, whose
recent books include The Sub and The Castle of Indolence.
In his time, from Captain From Castile in 1945 to Lord Vanity in
1953, Samuel Shellabarger was America's leading practitioner of the
(almost) lost art of the historical novel. Nowadays his books, which
once were snapped up by Hollywood, are out of print and to be found
only on eBay or at church basement book fairs. Along with my mother's
Perry Mason paperbacks and The Caine Mutiny, Captain From Castile was
among the first officially "grown-up" books I read. With his unerring
instinct for tailoring melodrama to fit history's greatest eras (the
conquest of Mexico in ...