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 244: Edward Everett Hale, Ups and Downs (1873)

Calvert Lithographing Co., Birds Eye View of the City of Detroit, c.1889
Calvert Lithographing Co., Birds Eye View of the City of Detroit, c.1889

After the sudden collapse of his uncle’s business, a young man works to establish himself in Detroit; meanwhile, a young German immigrant girl finds work as a governess in Milwaukee.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), a Unitarian minister and prominent American social reformer, also wrote several novels.  This one,  though sometimes marred by its author’s enthusiasms, has some lively characters and several interesting settings.

A “quiet story of domestic life in America . . . ,  a life as homely and picturesque as any that Mrs. Gaskell or George Eliot has described.”  Saturday Review, October 25, 1873

“A very characteristic story of American life . . . written with humour and pathos.” Spectator, November 29, 1873

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/upsanddownsanev00halegoog