The Forest Lovers

The Forest Lovers is a historical romance by Maurice Hewlett (1861-1923), the English novelist, poet, and essayist whose serious body of late Victorian and Edwardian historical fiction made him one of the leading English romance writers of his generation. The novel was first published in 1898 and was one of Hewlett’s first major commercial successes.

The book is set in medieval England and follows the romantic adventures of Prosper le Gai, a young knight, and Isoult la Desirous, the young woman he marries early in the novel under unusual circumstances. The plot moves through forest landscapes, knightly combats, romantic complications, and the various dramatic situations that the late Victorian medievalist tradition required for serious historical romance.

Hewlett worked in the medievalist tradition that William Morris had developed across the previous decades and that the broader pre-Raphaelite literary and artistic movement had shaped. His historical fiction generally combines careful period detail with notable romantic and dramatic plot in the manner that late Victorian historical romance favored. The Forest Lovers remained in print continuously for several decades after its first publication.