Shining Ferry: A Cornish Regional Romance of Tidal Crossings, Village Memory, Private Feeling, and the Luminous Pull of Home

In *Shining Ferry*, Arthur Quiller-Couch presents a richly atmospheric tale shaped by the landscapes, communities, and moral tensions of Cornwall. The novel combines romance, adventure, and social observation, using the ferry as both a literal crossing and a symbolic passage between past and future, isolation and fellowship, innocence and experience. Quiller-Couch's prose is characteristically lucid and supple: he balances vivid description and regional speech with irony, psychological sympathy, and a strong sense of narrative movement. The book belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian tradition of regional fiction, yet its interest in memory, changing social relations, and the pressures exerted by modernity gives it a broader historical resonance. Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), novelist, critic, anthologist, and influential teacher of creative writing, was deeply associated with Cornwall, where he spent much of his life. His intimate knowledge of its coast, folklore, maritime culture, and local speech informs the novel's distinctive imaginative texture. His editorial work on influential anthologies and his lectures on writing also help explain the book's careful craftsmanship and awareness of literary tradition. Readers interested in Cornish literature, historical fiction, and the development of the English regional novel will find *Shining Ferry* especially rewarding. It offers an engaging story while preserving a vivid record of place, community, and cultural change, making it valuable both as literary art and as social history.

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Rafbók: 24 november 2023