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The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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Notes
The Keepers of the People
p. 359the Morning Moralist — invented. the Tory Government — Lord Salisbury's third ministry, 1895–1902.
"the writer of 'The Desolate Land' and 'The Sick Soul'" — invented titles, in the manner of the decadent volumes of the decade.
"Take this ring … to Isaac Abrahams of Peshawur, the Jewish banker" — Peshawar, then the frontier city of British India and the last point of organised commerce before the passes. The ring is engraved with the Falcon claw; compare the girdle of seven falcon's claws that he clasped round Ruth at I.vii, which has just brought her across Asia.
a steamer, called the Tarantula — a chartered vessel; the name is Jepson's, and he does not explain it.
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BOOK II
Chapter ii
Narghiles — see I.x.
a beautiful young Jewess, the Mistress of the Mutes, and mute herself — Vashti, daughter of Prince Raleigh by Judith, the woman he carried off; see the Introduction, Signs and symbols, on the name. Her office is the Ottoman one: the dilsiz, the mute of the Seraglio, could neither overhear a secret nor repeat one.
"what says the second book of the Wisdom of the Princes?" — the dynasty's scripture, in several volumes: the Book of the Wisdom of Ralph, the unfinished Book of the Wisdom of Prince Raleigh, and the rest. Only the Princes and a few mutes can read them, since reading has been abolished for everyone else.
Chapter iii
the Arlab ga leel, the comers from the peaks — the Varandal name for the dynasty. Jepson gives no gloss and invents the language as he goes.
the flame-coloured mantle that had hung from the shoulders of the image of Indra — see Key Words of the Novel.
"It is expedient that one man die for the people" — John xi. 50: Caiaphas, the High Priest, to the council that has gathered to decide what to do about Jesus — "nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." The Evangelist adds that Caiaphas "spake not of himself" but prophesied. Jepson makes it the first sentence of the Book of the Wisdom of the Princes, a household proverb among the Varandals, and at II.viii a liturgical response shouted by a village at the execution of one of its own. See the Introduction.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Notes · Notes
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Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.