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 297: Mary A. Lewis, Two Pretty Girls (1881)

George Goodwin Kilburne, Tea for Two
George Goodwin Kilburne, Tea for Two

A dowager viscountess takes up two young ladies for the London season.


Mary A. Lewis (1849-1915) wrote one novel, this one; though her inexperience may show in her pleasantly naive tendency to favor us with miscellaneous and sometimes irrelevant reflections, she seems otherwise confident and assured, with interesting characters and a good plot.

“A slight, but very pleasantly readable, society novel, describing a pair of well-contrasted young ladies . . .   The various characters are fairly, though lightly, sketched in.”  Academy, May 21, 1881

“On the whole, for a story of its calibre, the tale of the two pretty girls is not badly told.”  Athenaeum, June 4, 1881

“The story is . . . neither complicated nor extraordinarily exciting, but it is pleasant, cheerful, and readable, and it contains both agreeable conversations and natural sketches of character.”  Saturday Review, June 18, 1881

Download this fortnight’s novel here:

v.1 https://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000506E2#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-571%2C-118%2C2536%2C2359

v.2 https://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000506DC#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=778%2C303%2C1194%2C1110

v. 3 https://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000506E2#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=0%2C-153%2C2400%2C2233

Or, until the British Library restores its online texts, here:

https://archive.org/details/twoprettygirls04lewigoog