The Trial of Sören Qvist

"Probably (The Trial of Soren Qvist) is the most perfet of Janet Lewis' novels, and among the most perfect of any novels." - Fred Inglis, Critque: Studies in Modern Fiction "I believe that there is nothing in my account of the Parson of Vejlby which might not have happened as I tell it. He is one of a great company of men and women who have preferred to lose their lives rather than accept a universe without plan or without meaning." - Janet Lewis on The Trial of Soren Qvist "You know from the beginning what has happened- that a man has been executed for a murder no one in the small Danish community believes he committed. Yet circumstantial evidence points to him. By the end, he has convinced himself he is indeed guilty, and would rather die with a good conscience, forgiven by God, than struggle to live." - Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers "Intriguing ... Janet Lewis combines scrupulous research and exquisite craftsmanship to create stories of timeless human drama ... must rank among the finest historical fiction in English." - Tim Gioe, WDCB FM Radio, Chicago "Lewis has retold a true legend of Denmark in unadorned, free, and exciting prose. Here is a gruesomely fascinating story of such circumstantial evidence as to make the reader want to cry out in protest." - Saturday Review of Literature "A harmonious retelling of a seventeenth-century legend concerning a saintly pastor, his cherished daughter, and the villain who betrayed them...Miss Lewis's artfully simple prose achieves the effect of an ancient, lovingly illuminated missal." - The New Yorker "Some of the twentieth century's most vividly imagined and finely wrought literature." - New York Times

Originally published in 1947, The Trial of S\u00f6ren Qvist has been praised by a number of critics for its intriguing plot and Janet Lewis's powerful writing. And in the introduction to this new edition, Swallow Press executive editor and author Kevin Haworth calls attention to the contemporary feeling of the story-despite its having been written more than fifty years ago and set several hundred years in the past. As in Lewis's best-known novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre, the plot derives from Samuel March Phillips's nineteenth-century study, Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence, in which this British legal historian considered the trial of Pastor S\u00f6ren Qvist to be the most striking case.