Bondman Free: The Remarkable Adventures of a Gentleman Convict

by John Oxenham

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingA AcentsAcentsa A-Acentsa Acentss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of intere

342 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

William Arthur Dunkerley was a prolific English journalist, novelist and poet. He was born in Manchester, spent a short time after his marriage in America before moving to Ealing, west London, where he served as dea­con and teach­er at the Ealing Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church from the 1880s, and he then moved to Worthing in Sussex in 1922, where he became the town's mayor.

He wrote under his own name, and also as John Oxenham for his poetry, hymn-writing, and novels. His poetry includes Bees in Amber: a little book of thoughtful verse (1913) which became a bestseller. He also wrote the poem Greatheart. He used another pseudonym, Julian Ross, for journalism. Dunkerley was a major contributor to Jerome K. Jerome's The Idler magazine.

He had two sons and four daughters, of whom the eldest, and eldest child, Elsie Jeanette, became well known as a children's writer, particularly through her Abbey Series of girls' school stories. Another daughter, Erica, also used the Oxenham pen-name. The elder son, Roderic Dunkerley, had several titles published under his own name.

Reviews

[Eleanor]

The opening of this book was compelling and I had sympathy for the main character, even though he had committed a crime, because we as readers at least partially understand why he did it. The story held my interest as the released convict was reunited with his little boy and given a second chance and hired as a secretary by the judge who had convicted him.

Up until this point, I thought this book was a good picture of someone who had messed up, but had been forgiven and redeemed in a sense, by his own judge. However, I can only rate this book as a two star because toward the end of the novel, there is a large section that seems very prejudiced against African Americans. One African American man kidnaps the main character's son, and is described in demeaning ways. The author seems to make it sound like this one person is representative of the entire race. And overall, the second half of the book sort of dragged and didn't seem to have as much purpose as the first half.