William Powell Frith - The Artist’s Model
A rising doctor, a beautiful heiress, an impulsive young painter, and a poor city girl are entangled by love and betrayal.
The great M.E. Braddon (see Novel 004) was among the most often and unjustly maligned of Victorian novelists. Contemporary critics never tired of blaming her for Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), as the worst consequence of an unhealthy vogue for “sensation novels.” And her improbable plots are easy to mock. At the same time, they are consistently engrossing; while her characters are vivid and often surprisingly complex, her settings evocative, and her style subtle, witty, and exact.
“When our fault-finding is done with we thank Miss Braddon for a treat. Her novels are always agreeable reading and have as much genuine merit as would set up a dozen of her rivals. Her descriptions of Voysey Street and other districts are delightful.” Sunday Times, September 27, 1874
“The real secret of her success is that her people are exactly the same kind of commonplace, everyday folk as we are ourselves, and as our friends are.” Observer, September 27, 1874
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 (Tauchnitz ed.) https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_5HAdetMocuQC/page/n5
v.2 (Tauchnitz ed.) https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_lNzrF7wZ5JsC/page/n7