The Dorothy Dunnett Companion by Elspeth Morrison

About The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Dorothy Dunnett has earned worldwide acclaim for the masterful blending of historical fact and imagination in her two series of novels set in brilliantly reconstructed fifteenth- and sixteenth-century landscapes.

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II is an encyclopedic resource that completes and expands the reach of the first Companion in documenting the historical and literary riches of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo novels. In this second guide, Elspeth Morrison not only covers the final three Niccolo novels for the first time, but also provides a wealth of additional information about all of the earlier novels and highlights the links between the two now-completed series. Once again, she illuminates the real figures and events and the cultural and literary allusions Dunnett weaves into her works, translating foreign phrases and offering up fascinating background details, from the history of golf and the argot of galley slaves to the uses of puffins and polar bears. Together with the first Companion, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II provides a complete and essential guide to the world of Lymond and Niccolo.

About The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Here is a lovingly assembled, essential A-Z companion to Dorothy Dunnett’s brilliant Lymond Chronicles and the first five novels in the House of Niccolò series.

Elspeth Morrison has re-created the author’s exhaustive original research, documenting her myriad sources and literary references. Foreign phrases are translated; poems and quotations presented in full; historical figures and events fleshed out; subtle allusions–and there are many–noted. From the origins of the Arabic drink qahveh to a recipe for quince paste, from the medical uses of ants and alum, to Zacco, Zenobia, and Zoroaster, this easy-to-use A-to-Z reference richly illuminates the intricacies of the complex and far-flung Renaissance world Dorothy Dunnett’s creations so colorfully inhabit.

About The Dorothy Dunnett Companion

Dorothy Dunnett has earned worldwide acclaim for the masterful blending of historical fact and imagination in her two series of novels set in brilliantly reconstructed fifteenth- and sixteenth-century landscapes.

The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II is an encyclopedic resource that completes and expands the reach of the first Companion in documenting the historical and literary riches of Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo novels. In this second guide, Elspeth Morrison not only covers the final three Niccolo novels for the first time, but also provides a wealth of additional information about all of the earlier novels and highlights the links between the two now-completed series. Once again, she illuminates the real figures and events and the cultural and literary allusions Dunnett weaves into her works, translating foreign phrases and offering up fascinating background details, from the history of golf and the argot of galley slaves to the uses of puffins and polar bears. Together with the first Companion, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II provides a complete and essential guide to the world of Lymond and Niccolo.

Praise

"[Dunnett’s novels are] vivid, engaging, densely plotted . . . sustained by a riot of tangible detail that makes real the world she has conjured up. . . . Dunnett brings to bear her remarkable powers of description, giving us the 15th-century Mediterranean in animated miniature. . . . The effect is spectacular." —The New York Times Book Review

"[Dunnett is] the finest living writer of historical fiction." —The Washington Post Book World