David Alfred Bywaters's Crossword Cavalcade & Fortnightly Victorian Novel Recommender. Every Saturday! Either a new language-torturing puzzle or an old novel by an unjustly neglected Victorian author. Why waste time on other amusements?

Novel 350: Beatrice Whitby, Bequeathed (1900)

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, The Widower
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, The Widower

A man is devastated by his wife’s death in childbirth.


Beatrice Whitby (c.1856-1931) wrote some 15 novels between 1889 and 1911.

“Very few of her contemporaries can vie with her in a certain indefinite charm of manner, which renders almost everything she writes very pleasant reading.”  Spectator, June 2, 1900

“Not . . . a great book, but it is as good as” many contemporary “much-discussed, much-advertised volumes,” avoiding “second-hand, second-rate smartness”; features “quiet studies in human nature” showing “sympathy and understanding.”  Athenaeum, June 2, 1900

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/bequeathedanove00whitgoog