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Cynthia Harnett (1893 to 1981) was an English author who was trained as a painter. Therefore, she illustrated many of her own books. She is part of that elite company of creative people who were both excellent writers and excellent illustrators of children’s books. Examples include the British C. Walter Hodges, and the Americans Robert Lawson and Robert McCloskey. Harnett is best known for her six historical novels for middle school and high school readers. One of those, The Wool-Pack, won the 1951 Carnegie Medal for best British juvenile novel of the year, the equivalent of the American Newbery Award. The American version has been re-titled as The Merchant’s Mark, which is reviewed below. Another novel, entitled The Load of Unicorn, was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal in 1959. Its American title is The Cargo of the Madalena, also reviewed below. Both of these books are lovely novels, with accurate history, and with a writer’s touch that brings these times alive for the reader, as good historical fiction is supposed to do. The interesting thing about these books, both set in the late 1400s, is that their characters are not involved in great wars and politics but in the more down-to-earth pursuits of the wool business and the printing business. However, there is sufficient drama, conflict, and danger in these areas to provide the material for gripping stories.
The Merchant’s Mark is set in the Cotswolds region of England in 1493. This region today is a popular tourist destination, full of lovely stone-cottage villages set in green fields, which were, in 1493, full of sheep. The wool business was, for many centuries, an important part of England’s exports. Master Fetterlock is a rich wool merchant but is subject to the Staple, a powerful guild of wealthy wool merchants. His son Nicholas, about twelve years old, is the hero of the story, along with Cecily Bradshaw, eleven years old, his betrothed! The betrothal is to cement an alliance between the Fetterlock wool business and the Bradshaw weaving business, intended to make both houses stronger. But treacherous business associates steal wool that is marked with the Fetterlock mark (the merchant’s mark!) and damage Master Fetterlock’s reputation to such an extent that he is in danger of prison and losing his entire business. Nicholas and Cecily become friends and use their quick wits, especially Cecily’s, to solve the mystery of how the wool is going missing and carry out a plan to restore the Fetterlock’s fortunes. The story is masterfully written such that the reader feels that they are living in 1493. Harnett’s lovely illustrations effectively add to the story’s interest and verisimilitude.
The Cargo of the Madalena is set in London in 1482. Did you ever wonder how we went from isolated medieval monks slowly copying books by candlelight to the invention of the printing press? There was a lot going-on in-between we don’t normally think about – namely scriveners who worked in scrivener shops. Scriveners were people who copied manuscripts for a living. They would write letters and business papers for illiterate persons. Groups of scriveners organized into scrivening shops would crank out copies of new pamphlets, announcements, handbills, and other publications. When the printing press was invented by Gutenberg in Germany around 1450, and then brought over to England by William Caxton around 1480, these scriveners did not suddenly disappear. There was a competition between scriveners and printers. In some ways, this was like the much later competition in many countries, including the United States, between automobiles and horse-drawn wagons and carriages. For several decades, both technologies co-existed until automobiles finally won the contest.
The plot of The Cargo of the Madalena centers on such a technological rivalry but inside a blended family in London. The sons of the father’s first wife run his scrivener’s shop and the younger son Bendy, born of his second wife, is apprenticed to Thomas Caxton, who has introduced the printing press into England. There is a desperate struggle between scrivener and printer for the many reams of high-quality paper delivered in the Madalena cargo ship, with Bendy caught in the middle. Other intrigues come in, such as a dangerous search for an original manuscript copy of L’Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, a complete tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which Mr. Caxton wants to print and sell. But the real adventure comes in the war between the old and the new technologies of the written and printed word. The beautiful pen and ink illustrations by the author add to the story’s interest.