James Jacques Joseph Tissot, A Woman of Ambition
A twice-divorced woman schemes to regain social respectability.
Frances Charles Philips (1849-1921) was an army officer and a barrister before becoming a novelist; he wrote some 28 works of fiction, of which this was the first.
“Mr. Philips’s story is a work of art, and, being much superior to the rough sketches of an average novelist, it discharges the true function of every work of art by representing things as they actually are, and teaching the observer to discriminate between appearances and realities.” Saturday Review, March 6, 1886
A contrasting view:
“As in a Looking-Glass is an essentially bad book. I wish it had not been necessary to say this, as it is written with much sprightliness. . . . The novel is vulgar and disgusting, and, in some respects, worse than any of M. Zola’s; but, in the present temper of the novel-reading public, it will probably be read all the more on that account.” Academy, September 19, 1885
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