A younger son is badly treated by his mother.
Here is another novel by Aïdé (see Novel 076), with a good plot and some striking characters.
“‘Penruddocke’ is a novel which shows a certain amount of power”; several characters are “well enough drawn to raise a story, in other respects carefully told, above the ordinary level.” Athenaeum, July 5, 1873
“Even the most blasé of novel-readers would find in this tale a plot sufficiently interesting to arouse his jaded senses, and yet it contains, at the most, only two incidents that can fairly be reckoned ‘sensational.’ It mainly depends for its interest on the clever way in which the plot is worked out, nothwithstanding the presence of an unusual number of dramatis personae.” Examiner, July 5, 1873
“Mr. Hamilton Aïdé has given us another of his carefully written and interesting stories. Without anything remarkable in power or new in incident, Mr. Aïdé always succeeds in engaging and holding our attention. . . . The plot is carefully worked out. . . . And he is careful in his writing; his English is simple, correct, and elegant.” Spectator, July 19, 1873
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