Crossword 271: A Plus

 

William Powell Frith, A Dream of the Future

 

Only after I gave this puzzle its title did I remember having already made a crossword called “A Minus” (Crossword 005). Someday soon I’ll construct a puzzle and find, to my horror, that it’s exactly the same puzzle—in theme, grid, fill, and clues—as the one I constructed last year, or month, or week.  And when that happens I’ll put an end to this website at last and turn to my other lifelong dream—mastering the accordion.


Download this fortnight’s crossword:

271-A-Plus.puz

271-A-Plus.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

271 A Plus


A crossword of mine will appear Saturday, March 4, in the Wall Street Journal.


Novel 270: Annie Edwardes, A Blue-Stocking (1877)

 

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Boarding the Yacht

 

In Jersey, a gentleman rescues a young widow’s child from drowning.


For Edwardes, see Novels 158 and 212.

“Mrs. Edwardes is at her best in this book.  It has . . . the quiet humour which we have missed in her later works.” Spectator, October 20, 1877

“It is pleasant, bright, and inoffensive.” Saturday Review, November 24, 1877

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014766163

Novel 269: Frances Milton Trollope, The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837)

 

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, In Church

 

A widow falls under the spell of an Evangelical clergyman.


Here is another novel by Trollope, for whom see Novels 029, 079, 138, 189, 190, and 191.

This is certainly the best novel that Mrs. Trollope has produced, as regards dramatic execution and development of character.  It . . . shows how the highest and best feelings of our nature may be turned by evil guidance and misdirected enthusiasm.” Literary Gazette, September 16, 1837

“Never has the affectation of piety been more mercilessly lashed. . . .  Her object—a laudable one, as every one must admit, has been to show the pernicious effects of sectarian bigotry. . . .  This, Mrs. Trollope has done with unexampled vigour and ability.” Sunday Times, September 17, 1837

A contrasting view:

“To invent a succession of domestic atrocities, and then fasten them upon a particular class of religionists, proves nothing but that the author is an exceedingly illogical and absurd person. . . .  In truth this work is very disagreeable. . . .  Every thing in it is represented in excess . . . ; and the spirit of the whole is that of a perverse and tortuous mind, full of venom. . . .  Other authors contrive to get out of themselves—to lose themselves in the fiction. . . .  Mrs. Trollope never does this; she is always present to us in her books; we feel her influence in the bitter taunt, the vulgar spleen, the ill-natured reproof, the scurrilous criticism, and the giggling cant of good-breeding.” Court Magazine and Monthly Critic, October 1837

Download this fortnight’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/vicarofwrexhill01trol

v.2 https://archive.org/details/vicarofwrexhill02trol

v.3 https://archive.org/details/vicarofwrexhill03trol

Crossword 267: Happy New Year!

 

Frank Cadogan Cowper, Vanity

 

For more than five years I’ve been providing the world with a weekly Victorian novel recommendation and a weekly crossword puzzle. I thought that by now I’d be universally known and beloved. But I’m not, it seems. No one, on hearing my name at a retail outlet or on a customer-service line, has ever exclaimed, “What! No! Not the David Alfred Bywaters!” No street, however short or obscure, has been renamed in my honor. I haven’t been given a Nobel prize; I haven’t been given even a MacArthur “genius” grant, or an honorary degree.

I think that maybe I’ve been too generous, that I’ve made the world ungrateful by kinder treatment than it merits. So I’ve decided, with the new year, to post weekly not both a new crossword and a new Victorian novel recommendation, but either a new crossword or a new Victorian novel recommendation. Next Saturday, then, you’ll find on this site a novel recommendation, and the Saturday after that a new crossword, and so on and on, until my vanity is gratified, or until I grow tired of the whole business altogether.

Meanwhile, happy new year!


Download this week’s crossword:

267-Happy-New-Year!.puz

267-Happy-New-Year!.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

267 Happy New Year!


A crossword of mine will appear Wednesday, January 4, in the Wall Street Journal, and another Sunday, January 8, in the Los Angeles Times.


Novel 265: Annie Carruthers, The Pet of the Consulate (1882)

 

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects

 

To escape the drudgery of teaching in Chicago, a young lady exchanges identities with a friend, then becomes engaged and moves to Japan.


Nothing seems to be known of Annie Carruthers, who published another novel or two after this one, without much apparent success.  And yet (if one forgives the improbable plot twists, and ignores the admiring descriptions of the heroine’s fabulous outfits that laughably intrude at the most dramatic moments) it is altogether good, depicting a bad marriage made worse by the setting of a claustrophobic European outpost in Hakodate, Japan.

“A worldly, sensible, and rather cynical story, sufficiently well told to be read with pleasure, . . . really above average in merit, and something more than simply readable.” Athenaeum, April 15, 1882

“Some portions of the book are interesting as giving a faithful view of the life of the isolated English settlement” in Japan. Academy, April 22, 1882

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014138903 (Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the “view digitized copy” links to download the novel’s three volumes in pdf form)

Crossword 263: Teaser Rates

 

Augustus Leopold Egg, A Teasing Riddle

 

I confess that when I applied the title “Teaser Rates” to this puzzle, I wasn’t sure exactly of the phrase’s meaning.  Was it a sibling-behavior phenomenon studied by child psychologists?  Was it a metric for hair salon workers whose compensation is based in part on the size of their tonsorial creations?  It turns out that, like the title of Crossword 144, it’s just another dubious financial practice.  So it sounds more fun than it is—like so many things in life. But not like this puzzle!


Download this week’s crossword:

263-Teaser-Rates.puz

263-Teaser-Rates.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

263 Teaser Rates


A crossword of mine appears Thursday, December 8, in the Los Angeles Times.


Novel 262: Edward Dutton Cook, Over Head and Ears (1868)

 

Helen Allingham, At the Cottage Door

 

A wealthy solicitor’s son is secretly engaged to be married.


Here is another clever and lively novel by Cook, for whom see Novels 040, 111, and 166.

Much of the painting it contains is not inferior to Mr. Trollope’s. . . . The novel has scarcely any poor work in it, and no bad, trashy work.” Spectator, October 3, 1868

“Mr. Cook has done a new and somewhat daring thing” in his plot, and “has, moreover, achieved this new and somewhat daring thing in a style and with a completeness of success that . . . put him amongst our best living novelists.  This high praise is given . . . after cool reconsideration of the numerous merits of the story;  its skilful construction, uniform freshness and sprightliness of diction, wholesomeness of interest, and . . . the unconstrained humour of its somewhat superficial but thoroughly truthful delineations of character.” Athenaeum, October 10, 1868

A contrasting view:

“Mr. Cook stands just outside the circle of penny romanticists—one half-penny beyond them, so to speak. . .  It would be difficult to imagine a slighter story, yet Mr. Cook spins and spins with a hundred-spider power, and clothes the poor bit of plot in three volumes. . . . The thing is a literary cobweb. . .  one of the most vicious specimens of the porous, no-thinking, windy school of novelists that we have seen for many a day.   A course of such reading would in a few years materially increase the amount of national imbecility.” London Review, October 21, 1868

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000005B16A

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_000000059BCE

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000369A8