English language
Published July 19, 1956 by Faber & Faber.
Envoy Extraordinary
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"Envoy Extraordinary" is a 1956 novella by British writer William Golding, first published by Eyre & Spottiswoode as one third of the collection Sometime, Never, alongside "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham and "Boy in Darkness" by Mervyn Peake. It was later published in 1971 as the second of three novellas in Golding's collection The Scorpion God. The story concerns an inventor who anachronistically brings the steam engine to ancient Rome, along with three of the Four Great Inventions of China (gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press).Golding later adapted "Envoy Extraordinary" into a play called The Brass Butterfly, first performed in Oxford in 1958 starring Alistair Sim and George Cole. Leighton Hodson compares it to "The Rewards of Industry" from Richard Garnett's 1888 collection The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales, in which three Chinese brothers bring printing, gunpowder and chess to the West, but only chess is …
"Envoy Extraordinary" is a 1956 novella by British writer William Golding, first published by Eyre & Spottiswoode as one third of the collection Sometime, Never, alongside "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham and "Boy in Darkness" by Mervyn Peake. It was later published in 1971 as the second of three novellas in Golding's collection The Scorpion God. The story concerns an inventor who anachronistically brings the steam engine to ancient Rome, along with three of the Four Great Inventions of China (gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press).Golding later adapted "Envoy Extraordinary" into a play called The Brass Butterfly, first performed in Oxford in 1958 starring Alistair Sim and George Cole. Leighton Hodson compares it to "The Rewards of Industry" from Richard Garnett's 1888 collection The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales, in which three Chinese brothers bring printing, gunpowder and chess to the West, but only chess is accepted.
Places
- Ancient Rome