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 181: David Christie Murray, First Person Singular (1886)

Edmund George Warren, Lost in the Woods
Edmund George Warren, Lost in the Woods

An Irish politician pursues an heiress, while a Polish anarchist and his Tsarist opponents plot against each other.

Here is another novel by Murray (see Novels 009, 068, 127) with vivid characters, some of them remarkably unprincipled, and a thrilling, if implausible, plot.

“Secret societies and Polish and Irish patriots are not as a rule very promising subjects for a novel, and Mr. Murray has increased his difficulties by making his story a study of character first, and only secondarily a tale of exciting incidents.  But the chief person is . . . excellently presented, and the plotting is . . . cleverly contrived.” Athenaeum, February 6, 1886

“It is hardly needful to say that the book is thoroughly readable, and a piece of skilled workmanship.”  Academy, February 13, 1886

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003AA58#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-913%2C-1%2C3229%2C2211

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003AA5E#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-903%2C-1%2C3226%2C2209

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003AA64#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-898%2C-1%2C3194%2C2187