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Novel 337: James Payn, Less Black Than We’re Painted (1878)

August 30, 2025 David Bywaters

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Music when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory


A young gentleman falls in love with his father’s gamekeeper’s stepdaughter.


For Payn, see Novels 011 , 081, 211, 255.

“The different actors are well placed upon the stage.  There is much humanity” about them. Athenaeum, November 9, 1878

“The cheerfullest, springiest, oddest book conceivable; and it overflows with humour and rings with merriment”; the plot is “clever and new.” Spectator, November 30, 1878

“There is great brightness and freshness in the style.  It is enlivened every here and there by happy turns of expression, and it sparkles with incidental and offhand observations that show genuine wit and humour. . . . A vein of comedy pervades the whole, giving its colour to more than one of the principal characters, and cropping up in some scenes that are excessively amusing.” Saturday Review, March 15, 1879

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/lessblackthanwer01payn

https://archive.org/details/lessblackthanwer02payn

https://archive.org/details/lessblackthanwer03payn

Crossword 336: Close with Clothes →