In a New England town, a society leader takes up a poor but talented widow.
Harriet Waters Preston (1836-1911) wrote five novels between 1871 and 1888, but she was better known as a translator. The title here is a self-denigrating reference to the novel’s somewhat cursory plot; Preston’s interest is focused instead on the New England setting and on the protagonist, a married, middle-aged woman.
“A pleasant little story, with a rather ostentatious absence of completeness or definiteness in its plot.” Academy, February 3, 1877
“To be really entertaining in one volume is a great merit, and more especially is it a merit when an author is not only entertaining in small compass, but able to present us with a picture of manners and of a life which we but half know, and wish to know more thoroughly. . . . The interest of the tale lies partly in its intrinsic vivacity, and partly in the bright glimpse it gives us of the higher social culture of the Northern States of the American Union. . . . Short as it is, almost every figure in it is distinctly outlined and freshly painted.” Spectator, February 24, 1877
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