Novel 246: Anne Marsh-Caldwell, Lettice Arnold (1850)
Two genteel sisters, one virtuous, one beautiful, are left in poverty, to make a living as seamstresses.
For Marsh-Caldwell, see Novels 069, 187. Despite the obvious didactic purpose of the contrast between the novel’s sisters, its characters are lifelike and its plot involving.
“We like the tale for its delicate shading of individual characters chosen from the most every-day life.” Literary World, August 3, 1850
The author “has depicted, with her usual vigorous and truthful colouring” the wretched lives of seamstresses. Critic, November 15, 1850
A (somewhat) contrasting view:
“‘Lettice Arnold’ is the work of a woman—a woman who has great facility of composition, and considerable imagination, but little judgment. It is literally ‘stuffed full’ of prejudices, especially against light literature as it is produced in France”; but it “is well written; and . . . it is one of the few novels which can be perused with pleasure and resumed without pain.” Observer, November 4, 1850
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