Novel 044: Eliza Lynn Linton, Patricia Kemball (1874)
A forthright, virtuous young lady is forced by the death of the sea-captain uncle who raised her to move to the home of another uncle, a vulgar millionaire, in whose household lives also another niece, beautiful but devious.
Eliza Lynn Linton (1822-1898), who wrote some 27 novels beginning in 1846, was well known as a journalist and social critic as well as a novelist: her essays on “the girl of the period”—a vain, loud creature obsessed with fashion and indifferent to domestic virtue—were notorious. Here she arranges some vividly hateful, yet believable, characters in a gripping plot.
“An acute and serious study of certain phases of English society . . . written in a very clear, lively, and interesting style, with a pleasant effervescence of satire and epigram”; it has “enough . . . of graphic portraiture and witty observation to furnish materials for half-a-dozen novels of the everyday kind.” Saturday Review, November 21, 1874
“A very clever and well-constructed story” which “climbs at the last to a very powerful and well-managed situation. . . The characters are distinct, the individuality of each man and woman being put together bit by bit with pains and care.” Times, December 5, 1874
“A rousing heart-stirring novel. . . . Even those readers who do not care for social questions, will enjoy Mrs. Lynton’s excellent character-drawing.” Morning Post, December 18, 1974
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