Three couples question their mutual commitments.
Annie Thomas (1838-1918) wrote some 70 novels in 40 years and became perhaps the most critically vilified of all Victorian novelists. Referring to her routinely by her married name, Mrs. Pender Cudlip (as though they scorned to be taken in by her title pages), the reviewers excoriated her twice yearly for her supposed outrages against style and morality. “The English is slipshod and the story uninteresting, . . . the whole tone is petty, coarse, and vulgar throughout,” said The Academy of A Narrow Escape (1875); “Two as worthless volumes as we have read for some time,” said The Athenaeum of The Maskleynes (1875); “There is certainly no pleasure, and we cannot think there is any profit, in reading a novel of this kind, it is so thoroughly cynical in conception and execution,” said The Spectator, of Blotted Out (1876); and so on, for novel after novel, year after year. This one appeared early in her career, before the pattern was established; in fact its reviews were fairly positive—and well deserved: its representation of the ambivalence of several of its characters toward each other is subtle and convincing.
“The characters being real, the reader will find his interest powerfully excited.” Spectator, June 15, 1867
“There is a lightness of touch, a delicacy of finish, and a general refinement which makes this novel pleasanter than its predecessors. . . . The merit of the book consists in the interest turning upon the play of character rather than incidents.” Athenaeum, July 6, 1867
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