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 228: Annie Louisa Walker, Lady's Holm (1878)

George Dunlop Leslie, Fortunes
George Dunlop Leslie, Fortunes

An orphan, raised by a prim aunt, falls in love.

Annie Louisa Walker (1836-1907), encouraged by her second cousin Margaret Oliphant, wrote half a dozen novels between 1873 and 1894. This one is inventive and amusing, and also reassuringly conventional.

“As a piece of genuine, careful, and successful work, Lady’s Holm will bear a very favourable comparison with most of the ‘new novels’ of the season.  There are a grace and ease in the writing, a faithfulness in the execution, and a tenderness in the manipulation which more than make up for a certain want of freshness and originality.” Academy, August 31, 1878

“While there is a great purity and freshness about what she writes she also has considerable power of drawing character, and making it harmonize with its surroundings”; the novel “will be found well worth reading by all who can enjoy picturesque description and good incisive delineation of character.”  Spectator, September 7, 1878

A contrasting view:

“A rather pretty story, quite harmless, and suitable for unexacting novel-readers of every age.”  Athenaeum, August 3, 1878

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004EE6A#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004EE46#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004EE4C#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0