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 323: Sarah Doudney, When We Two Parted (1885)

William Maw Egley, The Letter
William Maw Egley, The Letter

A selfish heiress resents a beautiful former friend; meanwhile, a puritanical girl falls in love with a worldly actor.

Sarah Doudney (1841-1926) wrote poems and hymns as well as over fifty novels between 1871 and 1906, many of them pious works for girls.

“Shrewd sayings in a sententious form are scattered thickly throughout these pages, and prove the author to be a close but kindly student of humanity. She possesses, moreover, a vein of quiet humour which emerges pleasantly at times, as well as an artistic restraint which spares the reader unnecessary details. ‘When We Two Parted’ is a pleasant story of the conventional order.”  Athenaeum, March 28, 1885

“The lazy life of a small country town, where it is ‘always afternoon,’ is described with ease, and, if events are rare, the reader hardly recognizes the want of them. . . . Miss Doudney writes in a pleasant style. . . The book has a liberality of thought and treatment not common to works of this class.” Saturday Review, April 11, 1885

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

“The only fault to be found with When We Two Parted is that it is too much of a good thing.”  Academy, March 21, 1885

Download this fortnight’s novel:

The only digitized copy of today’s novel that I have found was once accessible from the British Library.  But in October 2023, the British Library was shut down as a result of a ransomware attack, and now, after 16 months, its Victorian novel collection remains inaccessible; many links on my site do not work in consequence.  I hope someday the collection returns; meanwhile, I trust nobody will mind if I post some British Library pdfs to an online storage drive, and links to said drive on this website, like this one, to today’s novel:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-n6YVdUjZQHjNqRX9ZiSEvX2EpfEriXu/view?usp=share_link