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  1. Home
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  3. The Thirty-Nine Steps
  • Cited by 1
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2014
Print publication year:
2013
First published in:
1915
Online ISBN:
9781139568166
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139568166
Subjects:
Literature, European and World Literature: General Interest, English Literature 1900-1945
Series:
Cambridge Library Collection - Fiction and Poetry
Information

Book description

This spy story of 1915 by John Buchan (1875–1940) is an archetype of the genre, but may be better known today through its film and television versions (especially that of Alfred Hitchcock in 1935). Curiously, although all keep the theme of German espionage which will trigger a world war, none of them sticks at all closely to Buchan's original plot. This is the first of five novels in which Richard Hannay, formerly a mining engineer in colonial Africa, now a patriotic gentleman of leisure, finds himself pitted against the enemies of the British Empire. Although the book is an exciting, if occasionally implausible, adventure story, it may be marred for a modern readership by the racism and anti-Semitism it expresses, though this was not exceptional for the period. The writing is also noticeable, however, for lyrical descriptions of the Scottish border country in which Buchan himself grew up.

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