David Alfred Bywaters's Crossword Cavalcade & Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender. Every Saturday! Either a new language-torturing puzzle or an old novel by an unjustly neglected Victorian author. Why waste time on other amusements?

Novel 140: Elizabeth Anna Hart, A Very Young Couple (1873)

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, The Young Housewife
Sir William Quiller Orchardson, The Young Housewife

Newlyweds struggle to get by on an inadequate income.

Here is another novel by Hart (see Novel 006).  It begins as a touchingly comic domestic story and ends in exciting sensationalism.  Its heroine is well delineated in both parts.

“Though the story is slender, it has some capital sketching, and abounds in the characteristic humour and observation of life which distinguish the writings of this author. . . .  We may recommend the story as delightful reading, and also the binding, paper, and printing of the book as most creditable to its popular and enterprising publisher.” Illustrated Review, January, 1874

“A very lively and pleasant little tale, vivid in its interest, and the harrowing part of it not too prolonged for endurance.”  Spectator, January 31, 1874

“We confess to having been much amused.”  Scribner’s, March 1874

Download this week’s novel:

http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014737729