Novel 144, Ellen Wallace, Margaret Capel (1846)

 
Sir Luke Fildes, Carina

Sir Luke Fildes, Carina

 

An innocent and virtuous young lady falls in love with her uncle's ward.

Here is another novel by Wallace (see Novel 074), with the same merits (quiet, vivid characterization, a good style) and the same defect (a painfully hard-to-swallow lovers’ misunderstanding).

“This is one of the best kind of ‘fashionable novels’: it is not only free from the vulgar impertinences of the ‘silver-fork school,’ but has the tone of good society, and, better still, a vein of pure and healthful sentiment.  It gives an animated picture of country life among the upper class of gentry at the present day, sketched with the skill and tact of a nice observer; who possesses the art of indicating scenes and persons with a few graphic touches, and the power of making characters act and talk naturally.” Spectator, January 17, 1846

“It is a very fairly drawn picture from the life.  It deals with the men and manners of our own time, and the author has been content to take the world as he finds it, without attempting to create imaginary persons or impossible events. . . .  Altogether this is one of the best fictions the season has produced.” Critic, January 24, 1846

“Here is the best novel of the Austen school we have ever seen, with real men and women, natural situations, brilliant dialogue; but there are no stage tricks in it, no startling effects, no murders, adulteries, or seductions, and only one death of any sort—consequently it has received very moderate praise in England, and no one in America seems aware of its existence. . . .  There have been very very few better novels written for the last six years.” Literary World, March 27, 1847

Download this week’s novel:

v. 1 https://archive.org/details/margaretcapelnov01wall

v. 2 https://archive.org/details/margaretcapelnov02wall

v. 3 https://archive.org/details/margaretcapelnov03wall

Crossword 143: PR Issues

 
John Everett Millais, The Twins, Portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare

John Everett Millais, The Twins, Portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare

 

One theme per puzzle—that’s always been the rule of themed crosswords. But I find myself asking—why? Why adhere blindly to the worn-out conventions of the past? Why thwart human progress with hidebound rules of unity and order? So what if a few reactionary members of the bourgeoisie are shocked or confused? Did that keep Wagner from sonic discord and narrative incoherence? Picasso from crudity and distortion? The Bauhaus from faceless rectangularity? Let the Philistines be shocked; let them be confused! So much the better! Let a crossword have not just one theme, but two!!

Download this week’s crossword:

143-PR-Issues.puz

143-PR-Issues.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

143 PR Issues

Novel 143: Francis E. Paget, Lucretia; or, The Heroine of the Nineteenth Century (1868)

 
John Henry Henshall, Thoughts

John Henry Henshall, Thoughts

 

A young lady tries to live like the heroine of a novel.

Francis Edward Paget (1806-1882), rector of Elford, wrote half a dozen novels promoting his High Church views, beginning in 1833.  This, a satire on the novels of M.E. Braddon and her kind (though it alludes also to Scott and Bronte), features an intriguing narrator, foolishly credulous and at the same time cleverly self-aware.

“This satire is quite just, because it exactly hits the great artistic fault of the sensational novel, the use of illegitimate means to produce an effect upon the reader.” Spectator, August 8, 1868

“A happier thought than the combination of a ludicrously sensational plot with a ludicrously sentimental heroine . . . could not have been devised.” Athenaeum, October 17, 1868

Download this week’s novel:

http://explore.bl.uk/BLVU1:LSCOP-ALL:BLL01016843384

Crossword 140: Beaten Down

 
Edward John Poynter, The Champion Swimmer

Edward John Poynter, The Champion Swimmer

 

If you wait till tomorrow, you’ll find the answer to 24 Down in the title of my crossword in the Los Angeles Times, to which this one serves as a sort of prequel.  Meanwhile, here’s a painting that—while not very clearly related to either puzzle—may at any rate provide a little imaginary relief from this summer’s weather, by which so many of us find ourselves mercilessly beaten down.

Download this week’s crossword:

140-Beaten-Down.puz

140-Beaten-Down.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

140 Beaten Down

Pointing Hand.png

A crossword of mine appears tomorrow, July 26, and another Thursday, July 30, in Universal Crossword. Another crossword of mine also appears tomorrow, July 26, and yet another Friday, July 31, in the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, on Thursday, July 30, another crossword of mine appears in

the Wall Street Journal.

Novel 138: Frances Milton Trollope, Tremordyn Cliff (1835)

 
Philip Calderon, Margaret

Philip Calderon, Margaret

 

A clever and ambitious noblewoman, displaced in inheritance by her infant brother, plots against him.

Here is another novel by Frances Trollope (see Novels 029 and 079), mother of Anthony and T. Adolphus, mother-in-law of Frances Eleanor.  Written early in her career, it combines involving melodrama with small-town social satire.

“The idea . . . is a very bold one, and has been wrought out with great skill.” Athenaeum, September 12, 1835

“The outline of the story is well conceived, and though there are gross improbabilities in the working out of the plot, it is in the main circumstances ingeniously involved.  Some of the little sketches of society in the neighborhood of a country town are fresh and animated; and some of the characters are happily conceived and well sustained.” Examiner, October 25, 1835

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/tremordyncliff01trol

v.2 https://archive.org/details/tremordyncliff02trol

v.3 https://archive.org/details/tremordyncliff03trol

Crossword 137: Decease

 
Evelyn de Morgan, The Angel of Death

Evelyn de Morgan, The Angel of Death

 

This is the third and final installment of the trilogy—hence the “cease” of “decease.”  Some critics may think I’ve got the order wrong, as “Defeat,” “Decease,” and “Decomposition” are, in a sense, the final three chapters of anyone’s biography.  

But the more subtly observant puzzle connoisseur will notice that the first pun of the first of the series returns as the final pun of the last of the series, giving the whole a pleasingly cyclical form that, in the face of decline and decay and despair, hints hopefully at renewal.

Download this week’s crossword:

137-Decease.puz

137-Decease.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

137 Decease

Pointing Hand in Reverse.png

A crossword of mine appeared yesterday, July 3, in the Los Angeles Times

Novel 137: Beatrice May Butt, Delicia (1879)

 
Evelyn de Morgan, The Soul's Prison House

Evelyn de Morgan, The Soul's Prison House

 

A quiet young woman introduces her best friends to one another, with unexpected consequences.

Here is another novel by Butt (see Novel 045).  It has several vivid characters, and three plots, of which the most prominent is also the best. 

“Delicia is one of those womanly portraits that can be drawn only by a high-minded writer. . . .  On the whole, the story will repay the reader’s trouble.” Athenaeum, July 5, 1879

“That ‘Delicia’ is a good novel nobody who has read it can have the slightest doubt.” It is good because of “the strength, the delicacy, and the freshness of the character-drawing, and . . . the interest of the story. . . .  The Stevens family . . . is really a triumph in its way.  It has all the truth to English domestic life. . . . We have not read so good a novel as ‘Delicia’ this year.” Examiner, July 19, 1879

“Without aspiring to the highest place, it is none the less one of the few books where there is nothing we could wish added or taken away.  This calm sufficiency and graceful tact in proportioning ambition to resources, if not exactly genius, is near akin to it.” Academy, August 30, 1879

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/deliciabyauthor00buttgoog/

Crossword 136: Defeat

 
Evelyn de Morgan, Cassandra

Evelyn de Morgan, Cassandra

 

Do you ever wonder what common crossword clue/answer combination annoys me the most?  No?  I’ll tell you anyway, even if by doing so I spoil this puzzle’s 1 Across:  it’s UTAH clued as “Jazz site” or “Jazz spot” or “Where to see a jazz group” or “Jazz-lover’s home” or something like that.  We’re thinking music, but it’s actually sports!  We’re thinking a vast and varied genre of music, associated with many of our country’s most talented people and most interesting locations, but it’s actually just a basketball team!  What a painful letdown.  And it’s not as though there were some hidden, surprising resemblance between jazz the music and jazz the basketball team—the latter was simply named for the former. And if the misdirection was ever amusing, after the thousandth iteration it isn’t amusing anymore.  Everybody please stop it!

Download this week’s crossword:

136-Defeat.puz

136-Defeat.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

136 Defeat

Pointing Hand.png

A crossword of mine will appear today, June 27, in the Wall Street Journal, and another will appear tomorrow, June 28,

in papers that carry Universal Crossword.

Novel 136: Margaret Agnes Paul, De Cressy (1856)

 
Evelyn de Morgan, Cadmus and Harmonia

Evelyn de Morgan, Cadmus and Harmonia

 

An impoverished but virtuous young lady attracts the love of a lord.

Here is another novel by Paul (see Novel 025):  ambivalent characters find themselves entangled in a subtle and apparently intractable conflict—until the author, out of time, or patience, or paper, suddenly resolves it by sending two characters to heaven and a third to South America.

“The persons have much consistency and reality about them; spirit is equable and well sustained throughout.” Spectator, June 28, 1856

It is “written in an unpretending, pleasing style.” Saturday Review, July 26, 1856

Download this week’s novel:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Wdq0wgEACAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Crossword 135: Decomposition

 
Evelyn De Morgan, The Love Potion

Evelyn De Morgan, The Love Potion

 

Last Tuesday I quietly embarked on this year’s summer novel / crossword series, a trilogy the recurring feature of which I’ll leave you to detect, or decipher, or deduce, for yourself.  If you’re planning to do this puzzle with young children, you should be warned that it contains not only partial nudity but (what’s even more dangerous to the developing brain) extreme crosswordese. However, nine hilarious theme answers make it all worthwhile.

Download this week’s crossword:

135-Decomposition.puz

135-Decomposition.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

135 Decomposition

Novel 135: William Gilbert, De Profundis (1864)

 
Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in the Prison of Despair

Evelyn De Morgan, Hope in the Prison of Despair

 

An honest couple do the best they can amid the squalor and vice of the slums.

William Gilbert (1804-1890), father of W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan), wrote some twelve novels, many, like this one, about the London poor, whose miseries are narrated in a breezy, unsentimental tone, with much wry humor.

“In this story Mr. Gilbert never introduces ‘high life,’ nor people of the better class.  He reveals the mysteries of ‘London labour and the London poor’ in a low metropolitan neighbourhood, and all through the book we get no distinct peeps at any higher social condition.  To interest the general reader in such revelations requires great skill, pathos, and power.  Mr. Gilbert commands them all, and combines with them, in his writing, a deep, true knowledge of human motive and action. . . .  That Mr. Gilbert is a true artist we cannot but admit, for out of the simplest details of low life he produces characters whose very vividness enchains the attention.  He is amongst novelists a realist.  Neither imagination nor caricature influences his portraiture.  Men, women, and children are precisely what he sees them to be, and his vision is correct, his judgment true.” Manchester Guardian, February 28, 1865

“‘De Profundis’ is an excellently written, unvarnished narrative. . . .  The style well becomes the subject—plain, earnest, unaffected, and with an admirable quaint simplicity of language in relating the most heart-rending details, which is more effective than the most studied artificial effects, as it is perhaps more rarely attained to. . . . We have never read a story of humble life so well and unaffectedly told as this, and we recommend it as a wholesome contrast to the pictures of vulgar splendour and luxury under which our tables groan.” Westminster Review, April, 1865

Download this week’s novel:

http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014418947