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Novel 170: M.E. Braddon, Only a Clod (1865)

February 15, 2021 David Bywaters
Charles James Lewis, On the Thames 

Charles James Lewis, On the Thames 


A common soldier inherits a fortune from a miserly uncle.


Here is yet another novel by the great Braddon (see Novels 004, 061, 115).

“Miss Braddon . . . tells her story with a brisk straightforwardness, and the working is compact and consistent.  And it is no small or common talent to be able to construct an interesting tale, and then to tell it in good language, without affectation or egotism. Several of the characters are very well sketched, but in the beautiful heroine Miss Braddon has done more than draw a mere colourless outline.  A good-humoured, simple-hearted, and spoiled young lady is easily drawn, but to change her gradually, and without melodramatic violence of nonsense, into something very different, requires more than mere smartness and ordinary skill”; her growth is “described with great ingenuity and force.” Saturday Review, May 27, 1865

“Only a Clod . . . is a fresh proof of the vigour and fertility of the mind which produced . . . ‘Aurora Floyd’ . . . and ‘The Doctor's Wife’. . . .  As a whole . . . the book will be eagerly read as a powerfully written and admirably constructed story.” Manchester Guardian, June 13, 1865

Download this week’s novel:

http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014579096

(Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the three “view digitized copy” links to download the novel’s three volumes in pdf form)

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