The Fortress was published by Macmillan in 1932, continuing the Herries Chronicle into the Victorian period (roughly 1820–1870). The “fortress” of the title is Doolittle Doolittle Ireby, the house from which Walter Herries — the embodiment of the respectable, acquisitive branch of the family — wages his campaign against Judith Paris and her descendants.
The novel’s central drama is the feud between Judith (now elderly but still formidable) and Walter Herries — a conflict that originates in Walter’s humiliation at Judith’s hands in the previous volume and that he pursues with the methodical persistence of a man whose pride has been wounded beyond forgiveness. Walter does not hate Judith exactly — he fears and admires her — but he cannot rest while she remains unsubdued. His attempts to buy up the land around her home, to isolate her socially, and to undermine her family’s position occupy decades and consume his entire emotional life.
Walpole’s treatment of the feud is psychologically acute: he shows how long-nursed resentment becomes an organizing principle of life, how the feudist becomes dependent on his enemy for meaning and purpose. Walter without Judith would be nothing — his opposition to her is the only passion that gives his careful, calculating existence any energy.
The Lake District landscape continues to serve as emotional counterpoint: the unchanging fells and valleys offer a perspective from which the human drama seems both insignificant and perpetual — the same passions recurring generation after generation against the same eternal backdrop.
Collecting The Fortress
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1932): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$100
- Without jacket: $8–$15