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The Milky Way - F. Tennyson Jesse's first novel - began life as a 1913 magazine serial called The Adventures of Viv. In it, poor-but-plucky Cornish painter/model Vivian Lovel recounts events of her twenty-first year: en route from Penzance to London by steamer, she catches a baby dropped over the side of a sinking ship - and decides to keep it. Penniless, however, she "platonically" pairs up with pan-like fellow passenger Peter Whymperis, an actor and aspiring writer, and together they find work with a fifth-rate repertory troupe. Soon sacked, they nevertheless leave with money enough to buy milk for the baby. They then spend a night locked in a wax museum devoted to notorious murders and later trace a fugitive from justice to his lair. At a costume party, Viv rescues her beautiful friend Chloe from a cruel seducer, by taking her place (and his car). Viv then flits to Cornwall for a stint of modeling at an artists' colony. She's tempted to put down roots, but Peter appears, and they dance away as faun and nymph into the night. Back again in London, a publisher, whose home they invade, commissions Peter to write and Viv to illustrate a travel book about Provence, so they promptly decamp for France. While visiting the romantic locale of famous lovers Aucassin & Nicolete, Viv retells the fable so vividly to a filmmaker they meet that he decides to shoot the movie, with Aucassin played by Peter and Nicolete by - Chloe! Will Viv's faun succumb to the charms of her BFF? Or will her milky way have a honeyed end? The Milky Way is the only novel F. Tennyson Jesse completed before inadvertently touching a whirling airplane propeller with her painting/writing hand, the treatment of which left her with fewer fingers and a lifelong opiate addiction. Subsequently, she turned to crime - writing much about murders such as those that terrified Viv in the wax museum - and her later novels seem just a bit darker, harder, more impersonal and less ingenuous than this jeu d'esprit which was her first. (Introduction by Grant Hurlock)

2Anecdotes of Dogs

By Edward Jesse

<br />"Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends." <br /><br /> The character, sensibilities, and intellectual faculties of animals have always been a favourite study, and they are, perhaps, more strongly developed in the dog than in any other quadruped, from the circumstance of his being the constant companion of man. I am aware how much has been written on this subject, but having accumulated many original and interesting anecdotes of this faithful animal, I have attempted to enlarge the general stock of information respecting it.<br /><br /> It is a pleasing task, arising from the conviction that the more the character of the dog is known, the better his treatment is likely to be, and the stronger the sympathy excited in his behalf. (Summary by Edward Jesse, extracted from the Preface)

"The Sword of Deborah" contains the reflections of a woman journalist visiting women working behind the lines in France during World War I. She writes: "I was glad to have seen all the different convoys I had, because no two had been to me alike, and to each I am indebted for a differing expression of the same vision, which is the vision splendid of a duty undertaken gladly and sustained with courage. From my first convoys -- the Fannies and the G.S.V.A.D.'s -- I got the wonderful facts of it, at the V.A.D. Convoy at E---- I caught that side of it which I as most glad of all to encounter, and at the V.A.D. Convoy at T----- I found that delightful spirit of sheer joy in danger which is too precious to be allowed to die out of the world just because there happens to be, at present, such a great deal too much danger let loose upon it." (Summary by MaryAnn)

4Beggars on Horseback

By F. Tennyson Jesse

This is a book containing 8 short stories, written in English. - Summary by ADR

Young Jackie runs away to sea and before long his ship is captured by pirates. Now sailing with the Moonraker and its captain, Jacky reaches Haiti and ends up fighting with Toussaint L'Ouverture in his struggle to free its enslaved people. Jesse's only adventure novel is in the tradition of classics like Treasure Island, but prompts the reader to think about freedom and what it means--for Toussaint and his followers, and for "free" women of that time. - Summary by Anne Erickson