The most obvious literary precedent for Shellabarger's historical novels, as more than one reviewer pointed out, was the swashbuckling fiction of Alexander Dumas pere (1802-1870), romances such as The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), The Three Musketeers (1844), and The Black Tulip (1850). Like Dumas, Shellabarger is not concerned with the niceties of the art of fiction but with color and romance to the point of excessive melodrama. Like Dumas, Shellabarger does not concern himself with psychological perceptions.

Unlike Dumas, however, Shellabarger is much more careful and authentic about his history.

One might also mention the immensely popular romances of Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925), noted for their spell-binding narratives and exotic settings: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Allan Quartermain (1887).

More immediate literary precedents are Hervey Allen (1889-1949) and Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957). Allen's 1933 historical novel, the vastly successful Anthony Adverse, set in the Napoleonic era, took its hero all over the...