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)