Elswyth Thane is best known for her Williamsburg series,
seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow
several generations of two families from the American
Revolution to World War II. Dawn’s Early Light is the
first novel in the series.
In it, Colonial Williamsburg comes alive. Thane centers her
novel around four major characters: the Aristrocratic St.
John Sprague, who becomes George Washington’s aide; Regina
Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoiled by a season in
London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from
England on the eve of the war and initially thinks of
himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less
fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an
indigent mother.
But we also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene,
Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that
brilliant galaxy playing their roles not as historical
figures but as men. We see de Kalb’s gallant death under a
cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate to the
swamp-encircled camp which was Marion’s stronghold on the
Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis
and Lafayette, which ended in Cornwallis’s unlucky stand at
Yorktown.
Dawn’s Early Light is the human story behind our
first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and
laughing through it to the dawn of a better world.
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