The Dancing Floor is a 1926 novel by John Buchan featuring Edward Leithen

Edward Leithen

Sir Edward Leithen is the hero of/character in several of John Buchan's novels. These were published over a number of years, the first in 1916, and the last in 1941, one year after Buchan's death...

. It is the third of five novels written about the character of Leithen.

Basic Plot Summary

Edward Leithen is an eminent lawyer who is introduced to the young and handsome Vernon Milburne. By chance, Leithen meets Milburne once again and they become close friends. Milburne divulges that since childhood he has had a recurring dream in which an impending and unknown threat approaches year by year. The year in which the threat is due to occur, the two friends find themselves on the Greek island of Plakos where they must save the beautiful Koré Arabin from the superstitious islanders.

Mary Butts

Mary Butts

Mary Frances Butts was a British modernist writer. Her work found recognition in important literary magazines such as The Bookman and The Little Review, as well as from some of her fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Bryher...

 in a 1933 essay described The Dancing Floor as "one of the first novels to owe its origin to The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...

".

Characters

• Sir Edward Leithen - a lawyer and Tory MP
• Vernon Milburne - a tall, handsome young man who first appears as aloof and detached
• Koré Arabin - a stubborn and yet vulnerable daughter of a malicious miscreant