The Bondman (novel)

The Bondman

The 1910 edition of The Bondman
Author	Hall Caine
Country	UK
Language	English
Published	1890 (Heinemann)
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	397 pp (1910 edition)

The Bondman was an 1890 best-selling novel by Hall Caine set in the Isle of Man and Iceland. It was the first novel to be released by the newly established Heinemann publishing company. It was a phenomenal success and was later adapted into a successful play and two silent films.

The plot revolves around two half brothers, the one, Jason, sworn to avenge the wrongs done by their father; the other, Michael, sworn to rectify these wrongs. They both fall in love with the same woman and their travels take from between the Isle of Man and Iceland, crossing personal upheavals, political revolutions and natural disasters. The novel ends with one half-brother giving his life so that the other may escape to a life with the one he loves.

In his autobiography, Hall Caine claimed that he identified the key thematic base for the novel as early as 1883, when he first began to consider fiction writing. However, it was not be until many years later and after a number of other novels that he would take up the story. Caine claimed that the novel was based on the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, although this has been questioned by his modern biographer as a later attempt to deflect the charge of questionable moral bases to his novels.

Caine was greatly interested in Iceland because of its connections to the Isle of Man through a shared Norse heritage and because of the Norse sagas which he admired greatly. Caine was particularly impressed by his friend William Morris’ four-volume translation from the Icelandic of the Saga of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs, published in 1876.

Caine began work on The Bondman in March 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent. He finished the novel in October of the same year at his new home of Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick.

An Icelandic fisherman, Stephen Orry, bears two sons, one to the governor's daughter in Reykjavík, another to the lowest of women on the Isle of Man. The Iceland-born son, Jason "the Red", is brought up in poverty and is left with his mother's dying wish for him to seek vengeance on his father who had brought them to that position. The Manx-born son, Michael "Sunlocks", is brought up by the Deputy Governor of the Isle of Man, alongside his daughter, Greeba, as Stephen could not support him or keep him from bad influences. When Michael is 19, Stephen returns and sends him to Iceland to make good his wrong to his wife there. As Michael sets sail from the Isle of Man, Jason arrives on a boat from Iceland. After surviving shipwreck in Ramsey bay, Jason is called upon to save Stephen Orry from his own boating accident off Maughold Head. However, Stephen dies of his injuries, but not before Jason comes to recognise him as his father and achieves a reconciliation.