A poor young lady, dislocated from her quiet home, is taken up by some distant (and dubious) relations with a taste for travel.
Here is another fine novel by Sidgwick (see Novel 082): it features a virtuous heroine at the mercy of an amusingly selfish and self-deluded couple.
“A novel from the pen of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick is always welcome, for while she steers a middle course between the rose-coloured optimism of the mid-Victorian novelists and the devotion to the doleful of their successors, the excellence of her matter is always enhanced by the alertness and vivacity of her style.” Spectator, November 17, 1900
“As usual, Mrs. Sidgwick has written a good book. She possesses, above the ordinary run of writers, the power to treat a comparatively slight plot in such a manner that it becomes absorbing, engrossing, a thing of paramount interest, till the last line is read; the power, too, to draw, with certain touch, a weak, or a false character, without a hint of cruelty or exaggeration.” Bookman, December 1900
“Many poorer novelists seem more discussed than Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick . . . yet she has staunch admirers, and in the memories of discriminating readers lingers as a writer of pleasant and wholesome, yet not common, stories. ‘The Inner Shrine’ is worthy to rank with these by virtue of an agreeable manner and good matter, a quiet thoughtfulness and a restful sense of humour. The people in it are interesting, because the author has found a way of making them reveal themselves; they and the situations in which they are placed are at times arresting and even poignant, though the verge of caricature or sensationalism is never approached.” Athenaeum, January 12, 1901
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