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Sword and Pen

John Owens

Sword and Pen

Paper book: €67.99

Digital: €16.99

Original publication
1887
Bilingual edition
12 June 2026
Pages
1335
Difficulty
Medium
Genres
Adventure
Moods
Understand myself, Escape it all
Translated from
English

Book summary

John Algernon Owens tells the life of Willard Glazier, born into a modest family in New York State: his childhood on the farm, his years as a schoolteacher, then the Civil War in the Union cavalry, his capture, prison and escape.

Now a successful writer, Glazier rides across the United States on horseback, then canoes down the Mississippi, whose true source he claims to have found, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. A life of adventure, told while its hero was still alive, from letters and articles of the time.

Told like an adventure novel, this biography is a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

The plot

A boy sets traps to pay for school. Willard Glazier, fifteen, lives on a farm in New York State. He dreams of studying, but his family has no money for school.

The world of the book

North and South go to war. In 1860 and 1861, eleven Southern states leave the United States to defend slavery. The North goes to war against them to keep the country together: this is the Civil War. In the cavalry…

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