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 245: Alexander James Beresford-Hope, Strictly Tied Up (1880)

James Arthur O’Connor, View on the Shannon
James Arthur O’Connor, View on the Shannon

Finding herself a social failure, an aging countess courts popularity by adopting her niece.

Alexander James Beresford-Hope (1820-1887), a well-known politician and patron of architecture, took up novel writing late in life, producing this and its sequel (The Brandreths) a couple of years later. His spirited delineation of his hapless characters is entertaining, if a little ruthless.

“The author . . . loves to look on the lively side of things, and his novel may be described as a comedy of life and character.  All his personages are more or less conspicuous by some eccentricity, foible, or amiable weakness; his incidents and complications are generally humorous, and the drollery is brought to a climax in the dénouement.” Saturday Review, October 16, 1880

“Thoroughly and in every sense a novel, conceived in a light and happy vein, and scarcely even demanding a serious thought from beginning to end.” Athenaeum, October 23, 1880

A contrasting view:

It is “lively enough as regards some passages” but “there is not a single character capable of creating a genuine interest in the mind of the reader. . . .  It seemed somewhat coarse all through, and left a nasty taste in the mouth.”  Academy, November 20, 1880

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph013992560 (Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the “view digitized copy” links to download the novel’s three volumes in pdf form)