Daniel Defoe, The Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins

Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1718

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Prose Fiction Narrative

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The Memoirs ofMajor Alexander Ramkins

is a pseudo-Jacobite military memoir published in December 1718. It follows the career of a Highland Scot in the service of the exiled King James II and then of James’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender. The action covers the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), by which James II was deposed, provoking resistance in Scotland; it proceeds through the campaigns of the Nine Years’ War (1689–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–14), during which James’s British supporters served in the French army against England (Britain after the 1707 Union) in a bid to restore the Stuarts; and it culminates somewhat anti-climactically in the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. Ultimately, Ramkins admits that the…

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617 words

Citation: Seager, Nicholas. "The Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 October 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28799, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Daniel Defoe, The Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins

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