Red Revenge

A Romance of Cawnpore

By Charles E. Pearce

This is the second in Pearce’s trilogy of the Indian Mutiny, published in October 1911 by Stanley Paul & Company.

This is a review from the Aberdeen Daily Journal, published 4 December 1911:

“To the memory of the brave men and devoted women who perished at Cawnpore this book is reverently inscribed.” Such is the dedicatory notice with which the author prefaces his latest contribution to the literature of the which our troubles in India have been so fruitful a source. Mr Pearce has already proved himself a writer of fire and vigour, with a most engaging, whole-hearted joy in gallant deeds, and in “Red Revenge” he fully maintains his reputation as an absolutely accurate recorder of historical facts and a thrilling story-teller. Of affairs relating to the Indian Mutiny he has made a special study, and in this book, while he traces with a powerfully dramatic pen the course of Ruth Armitage’s love, he places fact before fiction, and he pictures in a very graphic fashion the progress of events in Cawnpore leading up to the occupation of Sir Hugh Wheeler’s ill-fated entrenchment and its terrible sequel. The horrors of Cawnpore are faithfully depicted, but at the same time the author brings out in strong relief the noble, heroic endurance of British men and women​—​“a monumental example of dauntless courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice which cannot be excelled in the world’s history.” The fancy of the reader is gripped at the very outset of the tale, and it is retained with increasing firmness till the very end.

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