Calgary Public Library

Stolen from gypsies, Noble Smith

eng

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fiction

Stolen from gypsies

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75958917

Noble Smith

We are in the early 19th century: the era of the Napoleonic Wars-the backdrop for the works of Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian. The narrator of Stolen from Gypsies is no dashing Mr. Darcy or heroic sea captain, however. Instead, he is the comical Ambrogio Smythe, a hypochondriacal British nobleman who is "rich as a Fugger" (defined in the helpful and edifying glossary). Obsessed by childhood memories of Gypsies, the frail but determined Ambrogio leaves his ancestral estate in Warwickshire and makes his way to Italy during the Peace of Amiens, always aware of the lurking menace of the hated Napoleon Bonaparte. When the war between France and England begins again in earnest, Ambrogio finds himself "happily marooned in Tuscany." Here, he meets a wandering storyteller who spins him a magical yarn about a Gypsy babe kidnapped by a demon

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