Novel 202: Frances Eleanor Trollope, Aunt Margaret's Trouble (1866)
A virtuous young lady has a not-so-virtuous sister.
This was the first novel published by Frances Eleanor Trollope, for whom see Novels 033, 108; it is briefer and quieter than either of those.
“The characters are well drawn, and contrasted with satisfactory distinctness”; “the author never anticipates her catastrophes, but works up to a crisis with a cautious and self-denying reticence. . . . She writes with that genuine feeling which is necessary to enlist the sympathies of the reader; and . . . she has the art of making revelations by a delicate touch.” Athenaeum, August 25, 1866
“After wading through the ordinary novels of the season, after learning to what depths of dulness and folly the human intellect can descend, and wondering at the hideous pictures of vice or inanity which men and women can paint as representations of human life, it is positive mental refreshment to come across a such a book as Aunt Margaret's Trouble, which for pathos and idyllic tenderness may compete with even the best novels of the day. . . . It is a charming book, and worth half a hundred fictions of the more ambitious and elaborate kind.” Saturday Review, September 1, 1866
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