Customer Reviews

At a Winter's Fire

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This is certainly a once in a lifetime book for me!
I was browsing Amazon and decided to enter 'Bernard Capes' - a name I was sure that no one had ever heard of, let alone that there might be a copy available.

Well!!

Up came 'Bernard E Capes', the book 'At a Winter's Fire', published by Ayer Co in 1978.

What's so special?

Well (again!) my second name is 'Bernard', and, yes, I carry it because Bernard Capes was my (never-met) grandfather! And the book was first published in 1899! I have the first copy, autographed by him to my (also-never-met) grandmother.

What else was special?. Well (sorry) two things.

First, knowing that someone not all that long ago thought enough of the book that he published it so many years after the original.

Second, Bernard Capes is just about the best writer of similes that I've come across in the English language, and the book's worth having just for these.

Bernard Capes was a contemporary of people like G K Chesterton (who wrote a foreword to one of BC's books) and Edgar Allen Poe. He had published more than three dozen novels and a couple of anthologies of verse - not bad! It makes my five (only one published!) look a bit pale!

Anyway, perhaps there'll be a renewal of interest as this book is worth reading, not only for the similes but also to gain an understanding of a style that was popular enough in those days to enable a good living to be made from it.