William Etty, Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm
Does 8D leave you with a sense of 40A? Let 35D console you. Everything's great! So far.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Novel 072: Catherine Gore, Stokeshill Place; or, The Man of Business (1837)
Thomas Phillips, George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, and His Daughter Mary Wyndham, Later Countess of Munster
A virtuous young lady is trapped in the conflict between her striving middle-class father and the aristocrats who envy his wealth as he does their status.
Here is another great novel by Gore (see Novel 012), one of the most popular novelists of the early Victorian period, one of the best of any period. The titular “man of business” and the social setting in which he struggles are memorably delineated.
“No one possesses greater skill in taking up the thread, and unwinding it, till daylight breaks into the social labyrinth, than Mrs. Gore. . . . She has also the power of making her discoveries very amusing to her readers. . . . Years hence, we believe [her works] will be taken up as the most curious and accurate pictures ever drawn by a living writer of an actual time.” Literary Gazette, August 12, 1837
“In the case of a writer so long and deservedly popular as Mrs. Gore, our recommendation is scarcely needed, but yet we will recommend, candidly and without stint, these volumes to an attentive perusal. . . . Considering the author’s sex, her keen perceptions of the real and rough business of life occasionally excites our surprise. She has evidently studied mankind in other places and among other subjects than drawing-rooms and London coteries.” Metropolitan Magazine, October, 1837
This is “like all Mrs. Gore’s novels, skilfully constructed in point of plot, and cleverly as well as naturally detailed. She is a smart writer as well as a shrewd observer; and along with these requisites for one who would show up the frailties and follies of mankind or lash them effectively, she can, whenever she chooses, strike a deeper note and appeal to strong and tender affection.” Monthly Review, November 1837
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/stokeshillplaceo01gore
Crossword 071: Reinterpretation
Frederick William Hulme, A Quiet Retreat, Surrey
Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder why you are maintaining a website that offers weekly crosswords and weekly Victorian novel recommendations? Am I the only person who does that?
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear tomorrow, March 31, in the various newspapers that run the Universal Crossword .
Novel 071: Esther Bakewell, Glenwood Manor-House (1857)
Thomas Benjamin Kennington, The Letter
A virtuous young lady living in poverty is employed as the companion of a rich woman on a Yorkshire estate.
Esther Bakewell (1798-1873), who also wrote a novel for children consisting entirely of one-syllable words (available on Gutenberg.org) seems to have written only one novel for adults—this one. It offers an odd but amusing mixture of quiet domestic life with unlikely criminal scheming.
“This novel possesses merit far above the average. . . . There is a certain amount of character in the book, there are plenty of incidents, and some of the situations are excellent, the more so from the fact that they are situations which really belong to the novel and not to the drama.” Illustrated Times, July 25, 1857
“The action of this volume never flags; some of the persons introduced are of classes perfectly well known, yet presenting points of idiosyncrasy that single them out from the mass, and impart a strong individual character.” Morning Post, September 5, 1857
Download this week’s novel:
Crossword 070: Need for Speed?
William Powell Frith, The Derby Day
Today's puzzle will be distributed (thanks to "Bob Kerfuffle") at the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where people try to solve puzzles as fast as they can. I myself don’t like to solve puzzles fast. I like to savor them, to meditate on the nuances of the fill and the cluing, and on the ramifications of the theme. That’s why I design puzzles the nuances and ramifications of which can be easily meditated on. I won’t spoil your fun by explaining just what those might be in this puzzle.
Download this week’s puzzle:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear Friday, March 29, in The Los Angeles Times (and The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.)
Novel 070: Elizabeth Daniel, Esther Dudley's Wooers (1874)
George Bernard O'Neill, The Reproof
A proud young lady, newly orphaned, goes to live with an elderly cousin in a northern backwater and adapts with difficulty to local society.
Elizabeth Daniel (1823-1878), was the wife of promising Scottish novelist Robert Mackenzie Daniel until, in 1846, he went mad, dying the following year. Thereafter she wrote some thirty novels of her own; this, appearing late in her career, is a quiet character study.
“Mrs. Mackenzie Daniel has proved in a satisfactory manner that a story may be interesting without being sensational, religious without being morbid, moral without being dull, a study of character without being a marvel of psychological surgery. While capable of taking a bright view of individuals, she does not yearn and gush about the divinity of the human race; and in exhibiting the occasional infirmities to which flesh is subject, she does not think it necessary to discover in the mass of mankind the existence of crude lumps of moral nastiness.” Athenaeum, May 2, 1874
“A very readable novel. The story is well told; the characters are drawn with considerable cleverness.” London Daily News, May 23, 1874
Download this week’s novel:
Crossword 069: Technological Innovations
From Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851
This puzzle evokes a dystopian future in which machines, built to drudge for us, acquire wills of their own and become our masters. At first glance it may seem like just a good thriller. More serious solvers, however, will find beneath the surface a profound meditation on what it means to be human.
Download this week’s crossword:
069-Technological Innovations.puz
069-Technological Innovations.pdf
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear next Thursday, March 21, in the Wall Street Journal.
Novel 069: Anne Marsh-Caldwell, Emilia Wyndham (1846)
Edmund Blair Leighton, Till Death Do Us Part
A virtuous young lady, left in poverty, marries a stiff old lawyer.
Anne Marsh-Caldwell (1791-1874) published some 26 works of fiction between 1834 and 1867; her high moral tone exemplifies what most people associate with the word “Victorian.” Here, however, she successfully portrays complex characters in interestingly difficult situations.
“A masterpiece . . ., a most beautiful tale, with a charming, tender moral. . . . The characters are real, the incidents unforced, and the whole story a delightful combination of the natural, the passionate, and the wise.” Examiner, April 11, 1846
It “goes far, in our opinion, towards realizing the idea of a perfect novel. Its conception is new and striking, its characters are strongly marked and consistently sustained, and they are developed in conversation and action rather than in description. The book is full of amusing pictures of life and manners, while it lays open the deepest feelings of the mind and heart. The interest never flags, and yet the narrative is always simple, natural, and vraisemblable.” Christian Remembrancer, October, 1847
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/emiliawyndham01mars
Crossword 068: Ignis Fatuus
62A Bonheur, Sheep in a Landscape
Today’s puzzle suggests a number of illustration possibilities. A nice marsh landscape would fit the title. All too much modern art would fit 37 Across. I’ve settled on the above, which neatly combines 9 Across and 62 Across
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear next Monday, March 11, in the Wall Street Journal.
Novel 068: David Christie Murray, Joseph's Coat (1881)
George Paul Chalmers, Old Letters
A young man, heir to a fortune, offends his mother and flees his country with the connivance of his greedy uncle, leaving his secret wife behind.
I return to David Christie Murray (see 009). This, his second novel, was a great critical and popular success; its villains are particularly enjoyable.
“It is excellent alike as writing and as invention. The style is one of uncommon vivacity and intelligence. . . . About his work, too, there is a happy and attractive flavour of novelty. His characters and incidents are for the most part new and fresh.” Academy, November 5, 1881
“‘Joseph’s Coat’ is one of the best novels we have met with for a long time. It shows not only a rare power of understanding and drawing character, but the perhaps rarer power of constructing a plot of first-rate interest. . . . The character of young George is . . . a masterly study.” Athenaeum, November 19, 1881
It provides “a psychological inquiry into the nature of the class variously called knaves, scamps, or scoundrels. It is a study in the various shades of roguery. The author . . . evidently enjoys the work of delineation, of tracing ill-doing to its source, and detecting the scamp while he is still in favour with honest but less discerning people.” Saturday Review, June 10, 1882
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/josephscoat01murr/
Crossword 067: Doubling Back
William Fraser Garden, Back Lane, Holywell
I’m back in action, with back-to-back thrills! I've got your back! It’s payback time! So don’t hold back! Just download the puzzle.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear Friday, March 8, in The Los Angeles Times (and The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.)
Novel 067: Frances Cashel Hoey, Out of Court (1874)
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Woman in an Interior
A good man marries unwisely.
Frances Cashel Hoey (née Frances Sarah Johnston) (1830-1908) published some 13 works of fiction between 1868 and 1886 and collaborated with Edmund Yates on several others. She was a Catholic convert, and one of her purposes here is to condemn divorce; several contemporary reviewers agree that this does not impair the novel’s literary quality.
“This novel, remarkable in many ways, is especially so for its skilful delineation of character. All the principal personages and many of the subordinate ones stand out so distinctly before us that we have their images in our minds and are able to picture them to ourselves in the various attitudes they are made to assume, and to understand perfectly the motives which underlie their actions… On the whole we must say of this novel that it is as powerful as it is well written and well imagined. It is original in its tone and its modes of thought, and to all who can enjoy a good study of human nature, and who love to see follies, weaknesses, and sins unflinchingly exposed and as scornfully denounced, must afford a treat but seldom offered to them in these days of weak, washy novelties and meaningless love stories.” Morning Post, April 16, 1874
“So well kept up is the interest from the first page to the last, that her readers forgive her the three volumes...and the story is not at all too long for its requirements. . . . The peculiar charm of the book is its liveliness, the go and movement on every page; yet the workmanship is careful and correct all through, and the characters possess a distinct individuality of their own which is seldom met with now-a-days.” Times, August 21, 1874
Download this week’s novel:
Crossword 066: Multi-PL Choice
Joseph Farquharson, An Aberdeenshire Farm Under Snow
My choice of painting was inspired by 39 Down. I looked up the term online and found it originally referred not, as I thought, to a raucous but harmless celebration of some sort, but to a noisy, sometime violent mock-parade held to express collective “disapproval of different types of violation of community norms” (Wikipedia). And this reminded me of everything that arouses the misanthropy against which, dear solver, I am perpetually struggling—it reminded me, that is, of mindless tribalism, hideous clamor, deliberate cruelty in the service of some sanctimonious purpose. I found myself longing for silence and emptiness. The inhabitants of these Aberdeenshire farms, however maliciously inclined, have got to remain quietly in their snowbound buildings for the present.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Novel 066: Lucy B. Walford, The Baby's Grandmother (1884)
Archibald J. Stuart Wortley, Lilian Eldée
A well-intentioned middle-aged man, in love with a middle-aged woman, finds himself in a painful moral dilemma.
Here is another excellent novel by the prolific and talented Walford (see Novel 018), with an unconventional heroine and several other complex characters.
“The heroine is a charming creation, and as original as she is charming. . . . The characters are drawn with Mrs. Walford’s well-known skill, and there is many a touch in her delineation of the heroine that could only have been given by an accomplished novelist who has...the sympathetic imagination of a true artist.” Athenaeum, August 23, 1884
“There must be something deficient in the mind of any person who does not find it full of humour and vivacity varied by true pathos, and also by distinct traces of tragic power.” Spectator, August 23, 1884
“This is one of the most fresh and delightful stories recently published in English literature. . . . The book has humor and vivacity, with pathos and enough tragedy to relieve its lighter portions. The narrative is quiet and not very eventful, but it has the charm of flowing logically out of the clash and collision of character.” Eclectic Magazine, October, 1884
“To buoyant spirits and a fresh imagination the author unites a piquancy of style which is fairly irresistible. Her characters are life-like yet unhackneyed, she has an artistic grasp of plot, and excels in her conversations, which are thoroughly natural, spontaneous, and flowing.” Dublin Review, April 1885
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/babysgrandmother01walf
Crossword 065: Trial Runs
Herbert Draper, The Lament for Icarus
I have crafted this puzzle specifically for those elite solvers who are able to soar above the petty, earthbound considerations of vulgar linguistic usage that limit the intellects of the common herd. If you belong to this group, I congratulate you, and invite you to congratulate yourself. For self-congratulation is a primary—in fact, for many, the only—purpose of cultural experience. Let us wallow in it together.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine will appear next Tuesday, February 19, in the New York Times. Meanwhile, on the very same day, another puzzle of mine will appear in the various newspapers that run the Universal Crossword .
Novel 065: Charlotte Riddell, Too Much Alone (1860)
Sir William Quiller Orchardson, The Chinese Cabinet
An orphaned gentlewoman is married and then neglected by her hard-working chemist husband.
Charlotte Elizabeth Riddell (1832-1906) wrote over fifty works of fiction between 1856 and 1900, often set, like this one, among middle-class denizens of London.
“A well-conceived, well-wrought-out story, which has an air of human truth and reality about it which novels do not often possess.” Athenaeum, March 17, 1860.
“A thoroughly good novel” distinguished by “its downright reality”; practical scientists in charge of factories are brought “living before us, in very flesh and blood, not a blotch or stain overlooked.” Spectator, March 31, 1860
Download this week’s novel:
Crossword 064: Direct Addresses
Henry Holiday, First Meeting of Dante and Beatrice
A crossword puzzle, says Aristotle, or Coleridge, or somebody, should create its own alternative world, one in which, though people may not behave as expected, they nonetheless follow an internal logic of their own. I have tried, in my humble way, to obey these strictures, nowhere more than in this present offering.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
Novel 064: Anna Harriet Drury, Friends and Fortune (1849)
George Frederic Watts, Miss May Prinsep
To test her relatives, an heiress switches identities with her companion.
Anna Harriet Drury (1824-1912) wrote some 16 novels between 1849 and 1891. This one, despite intermittent downpours of religiosity, provides some excellent social comedy.
“It is at once amusing and instructive, genial and healthful. . . . Miss Drury’s style is peculiarly correct and elegant. She writes, indeed, simple, honest, unaffected English, quite refreshing after the artificial semi-barbarous Teutonic gibberish of the day. . . . Miss Drury . . . has a natural dramatic faculty—the power of entering into the feelings of others, and speaking in their persons.” English Review, March 1849
“Her perceptions are lively and keen, and her powers of delineating manners and character might well be compared with those of authors ‘of mark and likelihood.’ Her style is racy, animated, and easy, often pointed and epigrammatic. . . . The story is told in a pleasant and genial spirit; and although pervaded . . . by an earnest religious tone, it is so far from being bilious or melancholic that many a hearty laugh is to be enjoyed at the strokes of humour scattered through its lively pages. If Miss Drury is a serious thinker, . . . she has also a relish for a joke, and a keen perception of the ludicrous.” Morning Chronicle, April 14, 1849
Download this week’s novel:
Crossword 063: Groundhog Wild
Atkinson Grimshaw, Tree Shadows on the Park Wall, Roundhay Park, Leeds
Today, in Connecticut, will be held the Westport Library Crossword Tournament— where, frightened of my shadow, I will not appear. But, through the kind offices of “Bob Kerfuffle” (who also thought up its title) the attached puzzle will appear there, in paper form, and I welcome anyone led here by that means. I couldn’t find any paintings of groundhogs, but I’ve posted a nice one of some shadows. Imagine yourself as seeing them from a groundhog’s point of view.
Download this week’s crossword:
Solve this week’s crossword online:
A puzzle of mine appeared yesterday in The Los Angeles Times (and The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.)
A puzzle of mine will appear next Thursday, February 7, in the Wall Street Journal.
Novel 063: Mrs. Alexander, Ralph Wilton's Weird (1875)
Abraham Solomon, First Class, The Meeting
An aristocratic officer, threatened with disinheritance unless he marries well, is attracted to a mysterious girl.
Here is another, shorter novel by Mrs. Alexander (See Novel 001), with an easily guessable but entertaining plot and an interestingly complex heroine.
“In spite of the plot being . . . commonplace, the story runs well in the artistic hands of the author; the characters are definite, the heroine charming, and the result agreeable to the reader.” Athenaeum, April 3, 1875
“The characters . . . are well sketched”; “the story, though slight, is . . . one which from its brightness and play of fancy is sure to please.” Morning Post, June 4, 1875
Download this week’s novel:
v.1 https://archive.org/details/ralphwiltonswei01hectgoog/page/n4
v.2 https://archive.org/details/ralphwiltonswei00hectgoog/page/n4