The Broken Font (Annotated)

The Broken Font is a historical romance set amid the fractures of the English Civil War, where private loyalties, inherited faith, and political allegiance are tested by public violence. Sherer's narrative combines antiquarian detail with the moral earnestness of early nineteenth-century fiction, placing domestic scenes and religious symbolism beside episodes of military unrest. In the tradition of Scott, yet more overtly devotional in tone, the novel treats history not merely as spectacle but as a theatre of conscience. Moyle Sherer was a British army officer and man of letters whose career was shaped by the upheavals of the Napoleonic age. His service in the Peninsular War, subsequent captivity, and later literary work gave him a keen interest in the costs of conflict and the instability of political fortune. That experience helps explain the novel's sympathy for courage, endurance, and moral steadfastness under historical pressure. Readers interested in nineteenth-century historical fiction, religiously inflected romance, and literary responses to civil conflict will find The Broken Font rewarding. It offers both a window into seventeenth-century turmoil and a revealing example of post-Waverley historical imagination.

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Moyle Sherer (1789-1869) was a British army officer, traveller and writer. His first book Sketches of India was published in 1821. Encouraged by its success, Sherer produced his next work Recollections of the Peninsula. In 1824 his Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and Italy followed, an account of his pioneering experience of an overland route. In 1825 Sherer turned to fiction, and wrote The Story of a Life. In the same year a visit to the continent produced a volume entitled A Ramble in Germany (1826). In 1829 he returned to fiction, and brought out Tales of the Wars of our Times. In 1837 he published his final work of fiction, The Broken Font, set in the English Civil War.