The Lion's Skin

Rafael Sabatini

Sep. 2011 · The Floating Press

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In past eras, the illegitimate children of powerful monarchs and aristocrats were often sent abroad to be raised where they could cause no undue embarrassment to their biological parents. This commonplace practice forms the plot of Rafael Sabatini's epic classic The Lion's Skin. In the novel, Justin Caryll, the illegitimate son of the influential Earl of Ostermore, travels from France to his native England to confront his father -- and to exact his long-planned revenge.

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Rafael Sabatini was born April 29, 1875 in Jesi, Italy. At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages, and attending school in Portugal and, as a teenager, in Switzerland. By the time he was seventeen, when he went to England to live permanently, he could speak five languages. He quickly added English and chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English." After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. It took Sabatini almost a quarter of century before he attained success with Scaramouche in 1921. It became an international best-seller. Captain Blood followed in 1922 and was equally as successful. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year. While he would never achieve the success of Scaramouche and Captain Blood, Sabatini still maintained a great deal of popularity with the reading public through the decades that followed. By the 1940s, illness forced the writer to slow his prolific method of composition. However, he did write several additional works even during that time. His body of work consists of 31 novels, 8 short story colections and 6 books of poetry. He died February 13, 1950 in Switzerland. He is buried at Adelboden, Switzerland.