Century (novel)
1981 novel by Fred Mustard Stewart
Century is a 1981 novel by Fred Mustard Stewart. The story follows four generations of an Italian-American family with settings in both America and Italy. Most of the events that take place in the novel, take place in actual American and Italian history. Readers are witnesses to the rise of Benito Mussolini, the Prohibition period, Black Tuesday, World War I, World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and the gradual formation of the motion picture industry in Hollywood. The novel spent six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Plot summary
Introduction
Seven-year-old Princess Syliva Maria Pia Angelica Toscanelli is called to the Mother Superior's office. She is told that her father, Prince Filiberto was killed in battle, making the princess an orphan.
Private Augustus Dexter is on his way back from Savannah, Georgia, after delivering confidential papers from General Sherman when he decides to spend the night at a burned plantation house, in order to rest and loot the house. An old slave, offers him his mistress's jewels for fifty dollars. Augustus gives him thirty dollars and his father's gold watch.
“Century (novel)” enters the record as 1981 novel by Fred Mustard Stewart. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Century, novel and Fred can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Century (novel)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Century, novel and Fred provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5063120. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Century (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.