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