This is not a love story
"Pagan struggled momentarily with the three uneasy horses, ready to clamp down on their nostrils if they showed signs of scenting a mare somewhere below. Then he stood still, clasping the reins, waiting for the thunder of hoofs and exultant cries that would announce discovery and give his king and him their last chance to slaughter the heathen. But the ancient earthwork on the hill above the battlefield lay silent under the bright stars of May, silent as it had lain since the Romans had abandoned it to the winter rains and frosts more than six centuries before. No light moved now upon the battlefield. By the bright starlight Pagan could see the stripped, dishonored corpses lying in ghostly contortions where they had fallen."
Very few people have heard of or read Sir Pagan, which is too bad--it's a great story, and deserves to be better known. Written in 1947 by one Henry John Colyton, it's remarkable not only for the strength of the storytelling and depth of the characters, but also for the well-researched historical details, lack of bias (there are heroes and villains on both sides of the conflict), and--most surprisingly, for the time when it was written--a kick-ass heroine.
It takes place during the First Crusade. Our hero Pagan--a loud, arrogant bastard (literally, the illegitimate son of Stephen of Blois)--who nevertheless is possessed of a fierce loyalty and clumsy kindness, rescues our heroine Sibilla--only to discover, belatedly, that he had not helped her but returned her to a worse existence. Adventures ensue, in which Sibilla rescues him, and then they rescue each other. Long story short, Pagan learns some humility and they fall in love (betcha didn't see that coming). It's fantastic. (And there's swords! And trial by ordeal! And desert chases!)
So I have a bit of a soft spot for Henry J. Colyton, this man who wrote a book about a strong, can-do heroine during a time when women lacked equal rights and had little agency.
I've recently become a member of Goodreads and have begun adding books to my virtual shelves in a pretty random way--but for some reason my eye fell on my own battered copy of Sir Pagan, and I logged on to add it virtually. I was surprised to find that only two editions of the book are on Goodreads, and only two other people--besides myself--have read it (or at least, have said so on this forum). One of the editions had this description: "author Henry J. Colyton (pseudonym of Sara Zimmerman)"
I gasped. NO. WAY. I was fond of Henry when I thought him an anachronistic man ahead of his time in writing a kick-ass heroine in the 1940s--now that I discovered that "he" might have been "she", my interest was definitely piqued.
I set off to corroborate this, and discovered to my chagrin that the novel is a lot more obscure than I thought. (If you can find it, read it! It's so worth it!) I could find a few seller's listings on old books sites, but absolutely no biographical information. The exception were United States copyright renewals, which listed the author's real name as Samuel Zimmerman. Oh, there were a few places that claimed the author was Sara, but there were more that claimed him to be Samuel. I was disappointed again. Teased with the possibility of a female author, I was disheartened to think that the man behind Henry J. was...another man.
But even if that were the case, I still didn't have any information on him: who he was, why he wrote, where he came from. I was about ready to give up, when on the 20th or 30th page of Google hits, I found a mention of Sir Pagan that didn't belong to a bookseller, but to a library. The Dayton Metro Library in Ohio listed a copy of Sir Pagan (with the author's name as Samuel Zimmerman) in their Local History collection. I know about local history collections--at least, I know about my own local history collection, and I can tell you that some of the stuff in there isn't there because it's local but because it's just old, and I wondered if perhaps that might be the case with poor Pagan. But the library listed a 24/7 reference service, and so I decided to use the anonymity of the internet to my advantage and ask.
Big kudos go to the Local History Reference staff, particularly to Ms. Rickey, who was undeterred by the strangeness of my request and set off to investigate. She went first to the shelves to pull Sir Pagan from the shelf--and when she opened the book, she discovered a newspaper clipping tucked inside, which she scanned and emailed to me.
"WOMAN AUTHOR HIDES IDENTITY", the headline read, and I gasped and got chills. Henry J. Colyton was, in fact, Sara Zimmerman, a schoolteacher in Dayton. The article continued: "The publishers and Miss Zimmerman's agent had thought her to be a man. The robust quality of [Sir Pagan] did not lead them into the least suspicion that Henry J. Colyton was a pseudonym. However, when their representative in these parts could not locate Colyton, he made inquiries and finally came upon Miss Zimmerman, teacher of junior English at Fairview." The article went on to mention that she had published three stories in the Saturday Evening Post (I could only find one two-part story, alas) and one story in Adventure magazine, "a pulp paper magazine devoted to stories with an appeal for men." The publisher had apparently considered making it into a book, but since there are no records of it anywhere, I can only assume that they either changed their minds about the strength of the story, or they got cold feet after discovering "Henry's" true identity. Or perhaps the press simply went out of business--there are few records for them, either, and no histories.
And so: in 1947, a young woman wrote a stirring novel "of love and arms" under the name of a man, and sixty-three years later another young woman reads it, loves it, and sets out to discover more. I still don't know much about Sara: what she was like, whether she had a family, if she's still alive. But there's something very magical, something very heartening about the power of even very obscure books to inform and inspire long after the author has faded from public consciousness, even though she was just as much of a heroine as the kick-ass woman she wrote about.
Very few people have heard of or read Sir Pagan, which is too bad--it's a great story, and deserves to be better known. Written in 1947 by one Henry John Colyton, it's remarkable not only for the strength of the storytelling and depth of the characters, but also for the well-researched historical details, lack of bias (there are heroes and villains on both sides of the conflict), and--most surprisingly, for the time when it was written--a kick-ass heroine.
It takes place during the First Crusade. Our hero Pagan--a loud, arrogant bastard (literally, the illegitimate son of Stephen of Blois)--who nevertheless is possessed of a fierce loyalty and clumsy kindness, rescues our heroine Sibilla--only to discover, belatedly, that he had not helped her but returned her to a worse existence. Adventures ensue, in which Sibilla rescues him, and then they rescue each other. Long story short, Pagan learns some humility and they fall in love (betcha didn't see that coming). It's fantastic. (And there's swords! And trial by ordeal! And desert chases!)
So I have a bit of a soft spot for Henry J. Colyton, this man who wrote a book about a strong, can-do heroine during a time when women lacked equal rights and had little agency.
I've recently become a member of Goodreads and have begun adding books to my virtual shelves in a pretty random way--but for some reason my eye fell on my own battered copy of Sir Pagan, and I logged on to add it virtually. I was surprised to find that only two editions of the book are on Goodreads, and only two other people--besides myself--have read it (or at least, have said so on this forum). One of the editions had this description: "author Henry J. Colyton (pseudonym of Sara Zimmerman)"
I gasped. NO. WAY. I was fond of Henry when I thought him an anachronistic man ahead of his time in writing a kick-ass heroine in the 1940s--now that I discovered that "he" might have been "she", my interest was definitely piqued.
I set off to corroborate this, and discovered to my chagrin that the novel is a lot more obscure than I thought. (If you can find it, read it! It's so worth it!) I could find a few seller's listings on old books sites, but absolutely no biographical information. The exception were United States copyright renewals, which listed the author's real name as Samuel Zimmerman. Oh, there were a few places that claimed the author was Sara, but there were more that claimed him to be Samuel. I was disappointed again. Teased with the possibility of a female author, I was disheartened to think that the man behind Henry J. was...another man.
But even if that were the case, I still didn't have any information on him: who he was, why he wrote, where he came from. I was about ready to give up, when on the 20th or 30th page of Google hits, I found a mention of Sir Pagan that didn't belong to a bookseller, but to a library. The Dayton Metro Library in Ohio listed a copy of Sir Pagan (with the author's name as Samuel Zimmerman) in their Local History collection. I know about local history collections--at least, I know about my own local history collection, and I can tell you that some of the stuff in there isn't there because it's local but because it's just old, and I wondered if perhaps that might be the case with poor Pagan. But the library listed a 24/7 reference service, and so I decided to use the anonymity of the internet to my advantage and ask.
Big kudos go to the Local History Reference staff, particularly to Ms. Rickey, who was undeterred by the strangeness of my request and set off to investigate. She went first to the shelves to pull Sir Pagan from the shelf--and when she opened the book, she discovered a newspaper clipping tucked inside, which she scanned and emailed to me.
"WOMAN AUTHOR HIDES IDENTITY", the headline read, and I gasped and got chills. Henry J. Colyton was, in fact, Sara Zimmerman, a schoolteacher in Dayton. The article continued: "The publishers and Miss Zimmerman's agent had thought her to be a man. The robust quality of [Sir Pagan] did not lead them into the least suspicion that Henry J. Colyton was a pseudonym. However, when their representative in these parts could not locate Colyton, he made inquiries and finally came upon Miss Zimmerman, teacher of junior English at Fairview." The article went on to mention that she had published three stories in the Saturday Evening Post (I could only find one two-part story, alas) and one story in Adventure magazine, "a pulp paper magazine devoted to stories with an appeal for men." The publisher had apparently considered making it into a book, but since there are no records of it anywhere, I can only assume that they either changed their minds about the strength of the story, or they got cold feet after discovering "Henry's" true identity. Or perhaps the press simply went out of business--there are few records for them, either, and no histories.
And so: in 1947, a young woman wrote a stirring novel "of love and arms" under the name of a man, and sixty-three years later another young woman reads it, loves it, and sets out to discover more. I still don't know much about Sara: what she was like, whether she had a family, if she's still alive. But there's something very magical, something very heartening about the power of even very obscure books to inform and inspire long after the author has faded from public consciousness, even though she was just as much of a heroine as the kick-ass woman she wrote about.