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 361: Mary E. Mann, Perdita (1893)

Lord Frederic Leighton, The Painter’s Honeymoon
Lord Frederic Leighton, The Painter’s Honeymoon

A woman’s husband mysteriously disappears on his and her wedding day.

For Mann, see Novels 016, 154,204, and310.

It would make “an excellent melodrama”; the characters are “quite good enough to serve as scaffolding for a plot unusually well conceived.” Saturday Review, September 9, 1893

“The story is above the average . . . better worth reading than many a novel that aims higher.” Athenaeum, September 23, 1893

“Cleverness, grace, and a quiet humour” brighten a story that “might have been rather sombre.” Spectator, September 30, 1893.

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