Philip Calderon, Preparing for a Walk
A lively but virtuous young lady, raised by her unfashionable grandmother, is introduced into society by a fashionable aunt.
Frances Eleanor Trollope (née Ternan) (see Novel 033) here provides another collection of deftly handled comic characters caught in Victorian contradictions of class and wealth.
The novel “deals with ordinary people and characters in a fresh and graceful way. Nothing could be more hackneyed than the basis of the plot; but there are some delightfully natural characters, and the current of interest is calm and pure throughout.” Athenaeum, December 15, 1888
“That Unfortunate Marriage . . . yields to none of this lady’s previous works in point of faithful and observant portraiture, with all the quiet humour which accompanies thoroughly natural description of life and manners. . . . One rises from the book with the feeling that one hardly remembers or cares what it has been about, in the delight of having formed a new and interesting circle of acquaintance, whose counterparts we know to exist in the world around us, and whose thoughts and ways have become so familiar that we could tell to a nicety what any of them would say or do in any given circumstances.” Academy, January 5, 1889
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