A Lodge in the Wilderness

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A Lodge in the Wilderness
File:A Lodge in the Wilderness, Buchan, 1st edn 1906, cover.png
1st edition cover
Author John Buchan
Language English
Genre Quasi-novel
Publisher William Blackwood & Sons[1]
Publication date
1906[1]
Media type Print
Pages 378[1]

A Lodge in the Wilderness is a 1906 political quasi-novel by the Scottish author John Buchan.[2]

Plot

The book relates an imagined conference arranged by a multi-millionaire, Francis Carey, to discuss Empire. The guests are contemporary figures from the upper and professional classes, nine men and nine women[2] who have in common superb articulateness, wide experience, and an interest in understanding how Empire might be a positive influence.[3] Buchan uses the opportunity to set out a variety of views on political and social issues, and to play devil's advocate.[2]

Critical reception

David Daniell, in The Interpreter's House (1975), called the work "an extraordinary book, like nothing else". It is mostly serious discussion, but there is also a lot of fun especially in the portrait of Lady Flora Brume, based upon the real-life Susan Grosvenor who was later to become Buchan's wife.[3]

Writing for The John Buchan Society website in 2002, Edwin Lee noted that while the book has some aspects of a novel it is not a novel in the ordinary sense of the word. Rather, he suggested, Buchan is using the imagined conference, via the utterances of his characters, as a means of defending the ideals and practical benefits of Empire.[2]

In his 2009 essay John Buchan and the South African War Michael Redley noted that the book drew on Buchan's South African experiences. The author's intention "was to rescue [Lord] Milner's best ideas from the wreckage of his South African policy when British politics lurched to the left in January 1906".[4]

Andrew Lownie, in his 2013 biography John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier, suggested that while the attitudes appearing in the book may appear patronising to a late 20th-century reader, Buchan “shows himself to be far in advance of many of his contemporaries with his view of the empowerment of the individual and the Empire as a liberalising force for good”.[5]

References

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External links