A cosmopolitan young man inherits a country estate, then has to deal with his older nephew, whose boyish charm and speculative ventures cause trouble.
Here is yet another novel by Norris, for whom see Novels 002, 054, 104, 156, 209, and 260.
“The story is excellent, the characters stand firmly upon their feet, and the style has that combination of smoothness and vigour which is so difficult to achieve and so charming when achieved; . . . one of the cleverest and brightest novels of the season.” Spectator, November 24, 1888
“Mr. Andrew Lang, in a recent number of the Contemporary Review made a remark to the effect that Mr. W. E. Norris was—if I may use an advertising phrase—an ‘excellent substitute’ for Thackeray. Such a comparison is meant to be complimentary, but it is apt to be damaging. Mr. Norris is not Thackeray, but he is himself, and our plain duty is to be grateful for the mercies of the present without casting a regretful glance at the mercies of the past. . . . There is not a conventional or clumsily-drawn portrait in the book, even supernumeraries . . . being finished to the finger-tips. . . . In happy little bits of phrasing The Rogue is very rich . . . When the book-maker of the future compiles a volume of the ‘Wit and Wisdom of W.E. Norris,’ he will find The Rogue a happy hunting-ground.” Academy, November 24, 1888
Download this fortnight’s novel:
N.B.
The above links are, for the present, inoperable, because the British Library’s website has not yet recovered from a criminal attack. Meanwhile, a downloadable version of the novel, in its complete form, is, apparently, otherwise unavailable. Google Books offers volume 1 of the 2-volume Tauchnitz edition here:
and volume 2 of the original 3-volume edition here:
A site called Hathi Trust offers downloadable pdfs only to members of elite institutions, though the texts inolved are and have long been in the public domain. I am excluded; probably you are too. But we can page through the novel online here:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112052949465&seq=7
The whole situation neatly illustrates a sad internet irony: in order to block criminals, web sites put in place elaborate security barriers that block honest users—but don’t block criminals.