THE SUMMONS

The Summons is a 1920 novel of adventure and romance by A. E. W. Mason, published in America by the George H. Doran Company. Set just before and during the Great War, the novel recounts the adventures of Martin Hillyard, a secret service agent, and his army officer friend Harry Luttrell who aims to restore the battered reputation of his regiment. Hillyard has been called the nearest approach to a self-portrait that Mason ever drew, and his childhood and secret service wartime experiences are based on those of the author himself. The Summons has been called Mason's most accurate and complete account of his own youth, with the fictional Hillyard almost a self-portrait of Mason. Even Hillyard's school in the novel (which he hated) is based on Mason's own Dulwich, and his expedition to the Sudan mirrors that of the author himself in 1912.