I swore one day I would read them, but my poor attempts to learn French proved totally inadequate for the task (unlike at least three ladies I know who learned French using only Angélique in Quebec and a dictionary, so keen were they to discover the rest of the tale).Īs soon as I gained access to the Internet, my first task was to do a search for Angélique, but to no avail. On my return to Australia I called the publishers to ask when there would be an English version, only to be fobbed off. I bought them of course, in spite of my lack of understanding of French, but still believed the authors had died. And on the back, at last, information on the author – not Sergeanne Golon, but Anne & Serge Golon – in French. In 1988 on a visit to Paris I decided to try the French book shops, and there, in Gallerie Lafayette’s book section, was not only the missing book – Angélique in Quebec, as I’d known it had to be called, but two more after that. I was devastated at the thought I’d never discover what had happened to Angélique as she sailed into Quebec one winter’s morning. The only possible conclusion I could come to was that the author, the strangely named Sergeanne Golon (about whom nothing was said on the inappropriately jacketed books) had died.

On my next trip in 1986 I tried again, with the same result. So, as soon as I returned to England for a holiday in 1983, I hit the bookshops. The ending of ‘Angélique and the Ghosts’ made both patently clear. I knew there was another book – I even knew the title. I left England to live in Australia that year, and for a while put down the absence of new books to the fact that they were hard to get in Australia.

That day in 1968 I discovered what I still consider the most gripping, well-written, historically accurate and compelling series of books I’ve ever read – and I read a lot! By 1979 I’d read the entire series several times – I would re-read the entire series as each new book came out – and was delighted to find a copy of what turned out to be the last book published in English – ‘Angélique and the Ghosts’. It didn’t look my kind of book – I was into H G Wells, John Wyndham, Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and John Buchan, and was just about to discover Tolkein – and the garish cover would have put me off if I hadn’t been staying with my uncle and at a loose end. I was 17 years old when I read my first Angélique book. This section features some personal impressions from long-time Angélique fans who met Anne Golon for the first time in 1999.

Angélique à québec anne golon