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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2008-03 > 1206654836


From: John Brandon <>
Subject: Re: Fw: Royal ancestry and the next president of USA
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:53:56 -0700 (PDT)
References: <mailman.1156.1206654064.20268.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>


> > When, in fact, the exact opposite is clearly the case. I can't think
> > of any writer of great genius who _had_ royal descents (with the
> > possible exception of Percy Shelley [although I don't know much about
> > his ancestry] and Byron).
>
> ========= other writers with Royal Ancestors (no doubt there are more)
> Graham Greene
> Christopher Isherwood
> F. Scott Fitzgerald
> Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV
> Robert Frost
> Ted Morgan
> Sir Walter Scott
> Lews Carroll
> H. P. Lovecraft
> Alfred Lord Tennyson
> Noel Coward
> P. G. Wodehouse
>
> With best wishes
> Leo van de Pas
> Canberra, Australia

I said "of great genius," didn't I? Out of the list you provided, I
think only Frost, Scott, Carroll, and Tennyson would really qualify.
And even those are considerably "less great" than Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Pope, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Richardson, Keats, Wordsworth,
Whitman, Dickens, Mary Anne Evans, Hardy, Henry James, Melville,
Faulkner, all of whom utterly lack royal descents (at least as far as
I know).

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