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A large orphaned family grows up in genteel poverty.

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I have not yet read all Charlotte Yonge’s novels (see Novels 003, 053, 103), but of those I have read, this is the masterpiece.  It is twice as long even as the average Victorian three-volume novel, but you will wish it longer.

“We do not think that many of those who begin the four volumes will be content to leave them unfinished; and few who do finish them will not feel as if a great group were added to their intimate friends. . . .  Miss Yonge’s dramatis personæ have the reality which others seek in vain to give. . . .  It is intimate realization of her own characters, as living people, that gives to Miss Yonge’s stories, in spite of their apparent want of construction, a consistency, a tendency to one point which we sometimes miss in novels more ambitiously composed, and involving an obvious and avowed ‘plot’. . . .  Her skill in drawing a number of people, all of whom have a family likeness, while each is yet unmistakably distinct from all the others . . . and, at the same time, perfectly consistent in his or her own development, was never more severely tested than in this history of the thirteen young Underwoods, whose fortunes she follows for eighteen years. . . .  The charm consists . . . in the admirably accurate delineation of the daily ‘hopes and fears, passions and pleasures,’ which mould the quiet natures and sway the otherwise uneventful lives of” her characters.  Athenaeum, September 27, 1873

“Her range is of the narrowest, but within it she shows herself thoroughly the artist.  Nearly all her characters here . . . have a distinct life and individuality of their own.” Examiner, December 6, 1873

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004CC9E#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1724%2C-221%2C4882%2C2504

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004F1A0#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1710%2C-125%2C4854%2C2489

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Today’s puzzle has a sequel, involving a further twist, which I’ll make available next week as a bonus.  Meanwhile, here’s another painting by the great Atkinson Grimshaw, this one suitable for Halloweens with full moons.

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Download this week’s puzzle:

154-Nicknames.puz

154-Nicknames.pdf

Solve this week’s puzzle online:

154 Nicknames

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A farmer falls in love with one woman while entangling himself with another.

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For Mann, see Novel 016.  This is her first novel, justly praised for its unpretending plot and careful characterization.

“The whole book is pervaded by a keen sense of those subtle class distinctions which play so great a part in country life.” Academy, March 31, 1883

“Mrs. Mann writes a sensible, characteristic, and thoroughly entertaining ‘story of a quiet place.’  She affects nothing and makes no pretence; her tale of the parish of Hilby is refreshingly straightforward, and she succeeds admirably in her modest undertaking. . . .  Few more genuine or delightful romances have recently made their appearance.” Athenaeum, April 7, 1883

“Though it does not make great promises, at all events it performs as much as it has undertaken, after a thorough and enjoyable fashion which is not always to be met with in more ambitious works.”  It provides “a good and carefully-drawn picture of tranquil country life. . . .  Mrs. Mann has the excellent gift of being able to put herself in the place of the individuals she writes about, looking at things from the point of view they would be likely to take, and sympathizing with their sentiments, and this gift imparts real human nature to her work, and enables her to render faithfully delicate gradations of disposition and feeling which are not very easy to put into words, though it is by no means unusual for people to have a vague impression of their existence.”  Spectator, April 14, 1883

Download this week’s novel:

http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014791028

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It strikes me that this is my third attire-related theme this month.  Should I try for a fourth?  “Dressing Up,” maybe, where words like CROSS and RANCH and WINDOW and SURGICAL might be found backwards, from down to up, within phrases that seem funny from up to down?  Let’s see, CROSS gives us HOLINESS ORCHIDS: “Megachurch’s incense substitutes?”—great!  RANCH gives us SWITCH NARCOTICS: “Give up heroin for fentanyl?”—hilarious!  But WINDOW? What about TWO-D NIWA?  The Niwa clan, as Wikipedia tells us, was a “retainer clan of the Oda clan during the Sengoku period of Japan.”  So “Flattened Sengoku-period clan member”—Get it?  Hmm.   And SURGICAL?—GUERRILLA CIG RUSE: “That old trick in which the irregular military opponents of an occupying power distract enemy attention with a tobacco product, informally”?  Oh never mind.

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Download this week’s crossword:

153-Clothes-Down.puz

153-Clothes-Down.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

153 Clothes Down

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Prevented by tragic family history from marrying the virtuous young lady he loves, a young man seeks his fortune in Brazil.

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Here is another novel by Hoey (see Novel 067), with a plot not unreasonably censured by the critics, but several vivid, conflicted characters.

“Upon the whole an interesting and carefully written book.” Athenaeum, September 3, 1870

“There is a great deal of power in this story; and not a little of it is shown in the sketches of character, though less, we think, in the conception of the plot, which is very finely conceived, if not quite as well executed”; it will “earn for Mrs. Cashel Hoey a reputation far above that of the most successful manufacturer of ‘novels of the season.’” Spectator, September 24, 1870

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003F408#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-317%2C-1%2C3052%2C1951

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003F40E#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-305%2C-1%2C3061%2C1957

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003F414#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1217%2C-125%2C3900%2C2493

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So many of the crossword themes in the best, or anyway the best-paying, crossword venues seem to me, well, boring.  “Here are some common phrases with words that can join another word to make other common phrases!”  “Here are some common phrases that hide words in a certain category!”  “Here are some names of celebrities that happen to share a linguistic feature!”  “ Here are some  common phrases that share some pattern or other!” “Here are some common phrases placed on the grid in some pattern or other!”  “Here are some common phrases consisting of two words each of which starts with the same two letters!”  “Here are some celebrities whose first and last names each start with the same two letters!”  “Here are some celebrities who all wrote the same kind of book!”  “Here are some words and phrases that actually mean the same thing!”

I don’t understand the appeal.  But who am I to fight a prevailing trend?  I can’t beat  ’em, so darn it, I’m going to join ’em.  Today’s crossword has the most boring theme ever to appear in any crossword anywhere.  It’s going to put me on the map!

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Download this week’s crossword:

152-What-a-Boring-Theme!.puz

152-What-a-Boring-Theme!.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

152 What a Boring Theme!

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A rich, powerful female banker neglects one cousin, a talented young woman, and favors another, a dashing young man.

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Here is another novel by Oliphant (see Novels 007, 008, 056, 107).  It lacks concision, but it  represents some particularly interesting, internally conflicted major characters, and some particularly amusing minor ones.

“The author has drawn powerful pictures of this country town, and introduced into her tale a number of remarkable character sketches.  No other writer describes as well as Mrs. Oliphant all the lights and shades and the almost invisible barriers which serve to divide into as many distinct classes the dwellers in provincial neighbourhoods. . . . The scenes as the dénoûment approaches are very powerful, the climax artistically foreshadowed.”  Morning Post, January 2, 1884

“I have had so much pleasure in the book—its immeasurable delicacies of observation, its keenness of perception, its many moving touches of humour and wit and fine creativeness. . . . It has a certain distinction of manner, an easy mastery of method, and a fine superiority of mental attitude.” Academy, January 5, 1884

Download this week’s novel:

http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014632723

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This puzzle is modeled on the upper-class Victorian habit of changing into special clothes at dinner-time—not, as you might expect, special food-repellant clothes, that might be difficult to stain and easy to clean—but extra-fancy clothes.

The process of adapting this custom to the crossword form required a good deal of punning.  Now, the ability to enjoy unlikely puns is something you’re born with or not.  No doubt it results from a long-ago genetic mutation; probably it confers some survival advantage—though it also exposes its carrier to unique risks.  Anyway, if you don’t have such an ability, you might want to spare yourself this week’s puzzle.

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Download this week’s crossword:

151-Changing-for-Dinner.puz

151-Changing-for-Dinner.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

151 Changing for Dinner

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A young soldier goes to Scotland to shoot birds and falls unwisely in love.

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Laurence William Lockhart (1831-1882), was an army officer (he was present at the siege of Sebastopol) and newspaper correspondent (he was nearly executed during the Franco-Prussian War) as well as the author of three novels, of which this is the second.  Despite a slow start, and aside from a couple of overdrawn caricatures, it has vivid characters and an excellent plot.

“Just as we are usually better pleased by a painter who gives us a faithful view of some place well known to us . . . than by one who represents wonderful scenes with which we are not familiar, so is it with the story-teller: and thus a novel like the present, the incidents of which involve what is more or less the only form wherein romance presents itself in the lives of ordinary people, pleases far more than the productions of the criminal school, which appeal to the experiences of (fortunately) a very limited portion of the public.”  Athenaeum, November 18, 1871

“Next to the masterpieces that are apparently things of the past, we like the clever novel that grows on one”; Lockhart “shows power in the numberless little touches that lighten love scenes and descriptions; in slight liftings of the corner of the veil that hides the future from us; in felicitous ways of putting things.”  Saturday Review, January 20, 1872

“Fair to See is so pleasant a novel to read that one does not care to ask too curiously whether it is written according to the rules of art.”  Spectator, March 23, 1872

Download this week’s novel

v.1 https://archive.org/details/fairtoseenovel01lock

v.2 https://archive.org/details/fairtoseenovel02lock

v. 3 https://archive.org/details/fairtoseenovel03lock

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Some people seem to think that, just because they never leave the house anymore, they need take no trouble about their dress—that they can sit around all day in sweatpants and  t-shirts,  or other sartorial atrocities named for bodily fluids or letters of the alphabet, and suffer no debilitating moral effects in consequence.

Not I! When I made this puzzle, I wore a three-piece Oxford-gray vicuna-wool suit trimmed in gold thread, a hand-stitched mulberry-silk shirt of deepest burgundy, a powder-blue diamond-plated necktie, and Belgian linen underwear lined with mink.  I trust that when you solve it you also will  array yourself no less richly.

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Download this week’s crossword:

150-Richly Arrayed.puz

150-Richly Arrayed.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

150: Richly Arrayed

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A popular young man is rumored to have run off with a cruel baronet's wife.

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This, like the same author’s A Tangled Skein (Novel 089), is an intricately plotted mystery with vivid characters, written in a lively style.

“The machinery of the plot is intricate and uncommonly well worked.  And although ingenuity and multiplicity of incident are the cardinal features of Mr. De Fonblanque's book, there are many passages which rise to a higher level” and are “full of insight and expressive power.”  Athenaeum, January 2, 1892

“It is written throughout with force; it has a carefully constructed plot, and ends with a dénouement which the reader, even though experienced at guessing surprises, will hardly have expected.” Spectator, January 30, 1892

“There is no flagging in Jedwood Justice: the country society is well sketched.” Academy, February 6, 1892

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004D292#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-286%2C-1%2C2952%2C1962

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004D298#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-279%2C-139%2C3208%2C2132

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004D29E#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-287%2C-1%2C2947%2C1959

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Astute solvers will recall that  nine weeks ago I posted a puzzle called “Beaten Down.”  This is what the critics call a “recurring motif.”

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Download this week’s crossword:

149-Broken-Down.puz

149-Broken-Down.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

149 Broken Down

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A gentleman loses his competence in foolish speculations and tries to support his six daughters by running a chemist's shop in Yorkshire.

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Victoria Baker (1838-1913) wrote five novels between 1864 and 1894 under the pseudonym J. Masterman.  This one is a lively  treatment of several common Victorian themes.

“Without being exactly a work of genius, this is a very pleasant, wholesome novel, showing considerable descriptive power, and introducing us to some very agreeable and amiable characters.  The author writes in a fresh, lively style, and his dialogue is singularly crisp and natural. He has a keen sense of humour, and at times is unaffectedly pathetic.”  Illustrated Review, November, 1871

“In tracing the quiet annals of this interesting family the reader will find many domestic pictures full of homeliness and beauty.  The characters are drawn with individuality and distinctness, the narrative is easy, and the episodes are life-like and natural.”  Morning Post, November 20, 1871

“Half-a-Dozen Daughters is one of those healthy, natural books which remind one of a breezy day in the country.” Saturday Review, December 16, 1871

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004616A#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-314%2C-1%2C3274%2C1975

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000437EE#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-299%2C-1%2C3276%2C1976

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This is a crossword version of one of those eerie paintings the eyes of which follow you around wherever you go.

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Download this week’s crossword:

148-Eye-Movement.puz

148-Eye-Movement.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

148: Eye Movement

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A thoughtful and beautiful young lady is wooed by a painter, a rich young man, and (catastrophically) a philosopher.

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Here is another engaging social comedy—or tragicomedy—by White (see Novel 075).

One character is “a finished picture and a masterpiece. . . .  one of the most brilliantly executed portraits in modern fiction.”  Pall Mall Gazette, December 2, 1896

“A clever novel, subtle and discriminating in its character-drawing, containing at least one remarkable portrait, and full of excellent things that make it worth reading.” The Standard, January 1, 1897.

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/andria00whitgoog

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Everybody in the world seems to be misperceiving everybody else of late, with predictably rageful consequences.  Why should I miss out on the fun?  Here’s my own contribution to the global confusion.

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Download this week’s crossword:

147-International-Misunderstanding.puz

147-International-Misunderstanding.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

147 International Misunderstanding

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A younger son settles on an unpromising farm left him by his godfather.

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Rosa Mackenzie Kettle (1818-1895) wrote some 26 novels between 1839 and 1895.  This one has an involving (if sometimes contrived) plot and vivid (if sometimes exaggerated) characters.

“It is very pleasantly and unaffectedly written, is full of excellent description, and very true, but not common-place, analysis of character. . . .  The cleverest and truest portraits in the book, delicately, yet most forcibly touched” are those of an unhappily married couple.  “We have rarely seen that vague and baffling scourge of married life, incompatibility, analysed with a more masterly hand.”  Leader and Saturday Analyst, August 5, 1854

“The story is ingenious, and extremely well told; although the materials are very simple, the interest is kept up, and those who begin to read will not be likely to put it down before they come to an end. . . .  Those who are looking for a pleasant novel cannot do better.” Athenaeum, August 12, 1854

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/lewellpastures01kett

v.2 https://archive.org/details/lewellpastures02kett

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Since I intend my puzzles to last forever, I will add an explanation of this one, for the benefit of the solver of the future.

PPO, then, future solver, once stood for “Preferred Provider Organization.”  Years ago, health care was arranged rather to maximize the profits of private industry than to promote public health.  If you expected ever to need health care, you were advised to buy “insurance” from a private entity:  you would pay this entity a monthly fee, and in return it would pay a percentage of your doctor’s fees—over a certain fixed “deductible” amount.

So say you paid this entity $2000/month, in exchange for which it agreed to cover 80% of your medical costs after a $1000 annual deductible.  Say that, after 30 years of this,  you got a disease and had to go to the hospital for a week.  And say the hospital charged you $101,000 for your treatment.  Lucky you!—you paid only $21,000 (your deductible plus 20% of your costs); your insurer covered the remaining $80,0000!  And lucky insurer—having collected $720,000 from you over your 30 years of participation, it still got to keep $640,000!  It seems a little crazy now, future solver, but the theory was that everybody benefited.  The hospital got lots of money, the insurer got lots of money, and you didn’t die.

But there was a further little hitch, or snag, in the process.  Most insurers agreed to pay 80% of your fees only if you paid them to certain selected doctors, who had previously made a deal with those insurers.  Otherwise the insurers would pay only 60%, or 40% of your costs, or maybe even nothing at all.  These selected doctors were collectively known as a “Preferred Provider Organization” or PPO.

So, future solver, however bleak things may seem at the moment, don’t forget to remind yourself—at least it’s not 2020.

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Download this week’s crossword:

146-PPO.puz

146-PPO.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

146 PPO

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A selfish woman sends emissaries after her runaway orphan niece, with unanticipated consequences.

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Here is another novel by Cobb (see Novel 043), just as well-plotted, and witty, and brief as the last.

“In The Dissemblers, Mr. Cobb has constructed an amusing intrigue on the basis of a most ordinary domestic situation. . . .  It is continually funny, not in phrase, but in its predicaments.”  Academy, November 3, 1900

“The Dissemblers . . . shows that Mr. Cobb has by no means exhausted his large fund of pleasant invention nor abated one jot of his vivacity and sharp staccato treatment. . . .  In his limited range it would be hard to find an English novelist to equal Mr. Cobb, and we must cherish all the light comedy that the national temperament allows us.”   The Speaker, November 17, 1900

“This is as dainty a comedy of errors as has appeared for many a month.  The plot is as meagre as such a web of trifles should be, the portraiture is delicate and truthful, and there is a steady flow of deft and sprightly wit, with several unimpeachably skilful situations.”  Saturday Review, November 17, 1900

“Mr. Cobb has proved again in ‘The Dissemblers’ that he is a first-rate author with whom to spend an idle hour.  He imposes no tax upon the mind or emotions, and is always amusing and entertaining.  All his characters are delightful people who keep doing interesting things with a vengeance, and, however seriously they may take themselves, there is an element of quizzicality in his handling of them that is a direct appeal to the reader’s sense of humor.” Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1900

Download this week’s novel:

https://books.google.com/books?id=9t8NAAAAYAAJ

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There seems to be a trend nowadays of including more proper names in crosswords, on the theory that it’s fun to allude to cool stuff that fun, cool people like us like.  I haven’t joined this trend, possibly for selfish reasons:  my favorite Victorian novelists almost never show up in crosswords, whereas every other puzzle seems to include at least one Star Wars reference, however gratuitous: THE, for example, clued “Jabba ___ Hutt” or “Use ___ force, Luke!”

So I try to keep proper names out of my fill and also, especially, my themes.  I sigh, more in sorrow than in anger, when I encounter yet another puzzle where the theme turns out to be a set of actors whose last names are also the names of dog breeds, or whatever.

This time, however, I’ve compromised my standards: half the theme answers contain proper names.  But at least they’re reasonably passé proper names—a vice-president whose term ended in 2000, a children’s cartoon that premiered the same year, and a 1939 movie based on a 1900 novel.

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Download this week’s crossword:

145-And-There's-More!.puz

145-And-There's-More!.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

145 And There’s More!