Sir Francis Grant, Portrait of Miss Grant, the Artist’s Daughter
A motherless girl adores her demanding older brother.
Grace L. Keith Johnston (1843-1929) wrote over forty works of fiction between 1878 and 1907 under the name Leslie Keith. This novel, published by the Religious Tract Society after serialization in The Girls’ Own Paper, and therefore, one assumes, morally and spiritually unobjectionable, is also quite good on the purely literary grounds of style, plot, and characterization.
“‘Leslie Keith’ give us some really good and subtle studies of character in this story. . . . The last chapter, in particular, is an excellent bit of work.” Referring to didactic novels for the youth market, the reviewer continues, “There is a great amount of literary ability expended in the production of these books. The good ones among them—and these are far more numerous than most people would think—are really more pleasant to read than any but the very best of the novels of the day. They are more wholesome; they do not worry us with the insoluble problems of life; they are not bound by the convention that a good end is bad art. But they must often fail to find their fitting audience. We hope that Cynthia’s Brother—a title which somehow smacks of the nursery—may be more fortunate.” Spectator, November 2, 1901
Download this week’s novel:
https://archive.org/details/LeslieKeithCynthiasBrother1901Large
(I found no online version of this work, so I made one, using my own copy and my own inexpensive scanner. It’s not as pretty as it might be, but it’s readable.)