Novel 239: Elizabeth Anna Hart, Freda (1878)
A free-spirited young lady flees from her ill-tempered husband.
Here is a third novel by Hart, for whom see Novels 006, 140. Its heroine achieves unexampled heights of Victorian girlishness.
“It is clever, amusing, genuinely in earnest. . . . There is life and stir in every chapter.” Academy, August 17, 1878
A “most entertaining book”; the heroine is “a creation of singular merit. To have made so striking an addition to that gallery of imaginary portraits which a reader’s mind possesses is no slight achievement in a novelist.” Spectator, February 15, 1879
A (somewhat) contrasting view:
Despite the improbability of the plot “the result is more substantial than seemed possible . . . and there is pathos as well as farce in the tale. But the author has escaped by a hair’s breadth from downright imbecility.” Athenaeum, July 27, 1878
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/fredanovel01hart