---

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, A Social Eddy (Left by the Tide)

---

Two fashionable young sisters go to live with their merchant uncle outside Liverpool.

For Walford, see Novels018, 066, 121, 174, 227, and 279.

“Bright and pleasant reading,” with “abundant interest and movement.” Athenaeum, October 10, 1891

It is “certain to be enjoyed”; Walford “has a good deal of . . . persistent and interested wakefulness of sympathetic observation” which gives “a charm to the apparently charmless commonplaces of ordinary life.”  Spectator, October 31, 1891

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/mischiefmonica01walfgoog

---

What the world needs now is a mad hatter—not the Lewis Carroll tea party attendee with a broken watch and an insoluble riddle, but a maniacal putter-on of hats, a superhuman being whose mission it is to make everybody wear a hat, just like everybody used to do, before the modern obsession with being casual put an end to this wholesome practice.  In the happy past, we didn’t have to look at the hairlines of strangers, and, since our eyes were pleasantly shaded by hat brims, we didn’t have to wear the sunglasses that now make us seem to each other hatefully dead-eyed and cruel.  Who knows how much of the social conflict that our society has endured since the 1960s is just a side-effect of soulless stares and disagreeable haircuts?

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

334-The-Mad-Hatter.puz

334-The-Mad-Hatter.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

334 The Mad Hatter

---

In spite of herself, a beautiful but selfish young woman falls in love with her father's strong and virtuous curate.

---

For Braddon, see Novels 004, 061, 115, 170, 222, 223. and 280.

“One of the saddest stories that we have read”; the characters are “thoroughly human, and, at the same time, thoroughly pitiful.” Athenaeum, July 26, 1873

“A painful story, and confused in its rendering of character,” but “there is a certain quality of intention in the characters of this book which carries the reader over the faults and dreary bits.”  Saturday Review, August 23, 1873

For this fortnight’s novel, download

v.1 https://archive.org/details/strangerspilgrim01brad

v.2 https://archive.org/details/strangerspilgrim02brad

v.3 https://archive.org/details/strangerspilgrim03brad

---

This puzzle comes with an important disclaimer:  the “shrift” it provides is not effective as a means of remitting sin or conferring absolution.  If that’s what you want, you need a priest.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

333-Shrift.puz

333-Shrift.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

333 Shrift

---

A woman suffers from her husband’s bad temper.

---

For Trollope, see Novels 029, 079, 138, 189, 190,191, and 269.  The reviews of this one were not particularly favorable.

“Though it excites little interest and furnishes little entertainment, it is agreeably written, and contains a sufficient number of pleasing scenes and descriptions to render it very readable.”  Spectator, November 30, 1839

“Mrs. Trollope no doubt draws forcibly, but there is a rigidity in her characters which removes them from ordinary life.”  Literary Gazette, November 30, 1839

“A very inferior novel . . . dull and disagreeable; . . . nothing so preposterous as the one-faulted husband ever existed.”  Morning Post, December 6, 1839

v.1 https://archive.org/details/onefaultnovel01trolrich

v.2 https://archive.org/details/onefaultnovel02trolrich

v.3 https://archive.org/details/onefaultnovel03trolrich

---

Are you feeling unhappy?  Do you wonder whether you’re missing out on life?  Do you fear you’ve failed to reach your full potential?  Plentiful examples in film and fiction have a solution for you:  get divorced!  If you’re single, get married, then get divorced!  If you’re divorced, get remarried, then get redivorced!  Try again and again until you’ve divorced the right person.  Then you’ll be happy.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

332 Change-Partners.puz

332 Change-Partners.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

332 Change Partners

---

A dressmaker crashes a ball in the dress she was hired to make.

---

For Hart, see Novels 006, 140, and 239.

“The incidents are slightly improbable, but cleverly strung together. . . .  The sooner the story is dramatized the better, for after reading the book we want to see the play.” Boston Globe, March 7, 1876

“An impossible story, with some very painful incongruities, and not a few betrayals of intellectual feebleness on the part of the author. And yet we imagine that there are many respectable three-volume English novels without half its brightness, and ingenuity, and readableness; many novels, of apparently much more thought, without anything like the natural quality, the insight, and even the poetry of this entertaining little book.” Scribner’s, May, 1876

The heroine’s charm is such as to “disarm any critical faculty which the reader may possess, which is fortunate, as otherwise sensible persons might feel obliged, in justice to themselves, to declare it was all nonsense all together.” Athenaeum, September 2, 1876

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990147383550107026

---

It has lately come to my attention that the Internet is infested with a great many people who have wrong opinions and do bad things.  And I have to ask myself—and invite you, dear solver, to ask yourself as well—does not our use of the Internet render us complicit with these wrongheaded people and responsible for these bad things?  I fear it does. So I’ve decided that if the Internet does not remove these people within a reasonable amount of time, I will withdraw from it myself and invite you to do the same.  Reform, Internet, or else!

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

331 Or-Else.puz

331 Or-Else.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

331 Or Else

---

An attorney attempts to guide a client’s estate to a proper recipient.

---

Frank Barrett (1845-1926) wrote some 40 novels in a variety of subgenres between 1874 and 1914; this one has a particularly engaging narrator.

“A very pretty, natural, and refreshing story is A Recoiling Vengeance, although a slight and artless one. . . .  in its clearness and brightness it reminds us a little of the manner of Anthony Trollope.”  Saturday Review, September 8, 1888

Barrett has “a style which has ease and freedom, and at the same time a certain grace and restraint. . . .  It is a bright, taking story, rendered all the more attractive by a vein of very pleasant humour which runs through it.”  Spectator, September 29, 1888

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/recoilingvengean00barr

---

Some time ago (see Crossword 317) I promised a series of crosswords honoring the Periodic Table of Elements.  So today I give you “SB,” the chemical symbol for antimony.  But SB can mean many other things as well, according to Wikipedia:  San Bernardino and Santa Barbara, the Solomon Islands and South Burlington, Vermont, the Statistic Bureau of Japan, and St. Bonaventure.  Any solver who understands Wikipedia and is able to add to this list “A crossword puzzle by David Alfred Bywaters” may apply to me for an autographed copy of this puzzle, suitable for framing.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

330 SB.puz

330 SB.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

330 SB

---

An heiress, shipwrecked in childhood, is abducted and raised by smugglers.

---

For Crowe, see Novels 023and 272.

“The authoress considerably oversteps very often the limits of probability, and suffers herself to be betrayed into gross violation even of the possible,” but “it is long since we have perused a novel which afforded us more pleasure. . . .  No one can fail to be struck with a certain air of freshness and originality in the conception, and great vigour in the working out of the narrative; from the commencement to the end there is an endless series of adventures, varied at every turn. Altogether the story of Lilly Dawson is a delightful tale, related with vigour, full of striking and original scenes, and displaying . . . considerable acquaintance with human nature.”  Sunday Times, March 14, 1847

“It is . . . in the consummate art with which a character itself not very prepossessing is invested with interest, in the power with which the gradual awakening of sense and intellect, from the prostration of servitude and tyranny is portrayed, and in the life and character which is impressed upon each accessory character, rather than in the mere incident and narrative, that lie the chief merits of this truly clever and able performance. It belongs to that class of story which, since the days of Fielding and Richardson, has been the most enduring of all works of fiction.”  New Monthly Magazine, April 1847

Download this fortnight’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/storyoflillydaws01crow

v.2 https://archive.org/details/storyoflillydaws02crow

v.3 https://archive.org/details/storyoflillydaws03crow

---

The purpose of this website, like that of all great modern art, is to bring about a radical rethinking of the human condition, of its meaning and purpose, its origin and end.  When refined people see abstract painting or hear atonal music, their very sense of reality is challenged; they come away changed, ennobled, completed.  Of course, there are those, not so refined, who see only smudges and hear only noise.  And so it is with my crosswords.  While I interrogate the unstable relationship between signifier and signified, with the aim of leading the refined solver to rethink the very meaning of meaning, there are those who just think, “Oh here’s another stupid pun.”  But I do not cross my words for them.

---

Download this week’s crossword:

329 Rethinking.puz

329 Rethinking.pdf

Solve this week’s crossword online:

329 Rethinking

---

A young woman finds herself disinherited in favor of her guardian’s housekeeper.

---

Archie Armstrong (1859-1925), a journalist and editor, wrote one play, one story collection, and one novel, this one.

Armstrong “can tell a story very pleasantly, and has an instinct for a plot.” Academy, March 6, 1897

A “well-told story of to-day, written in good English.” Athenaeum, March 20, 1897

“Distinctly good”; the heroine is “very lifelike.”  Spectator, October 9, 1897

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/undercircumstanc00arms

---

What is it all for?  It’s a question that eventually occurs to every thinking mind.  Some turn to religion, some are content to rest in ignorance, and some distract themselves with more answerable questions like, “What’s 1 Across?”

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

328 What's-It-All-For?.puz

328 What's-It-All-For?.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

328 What’s It All For?

---

A woman returns from India to England and is treated ungratefully by a society leader whose life she saved.

---

For Croker, see Novels 013, 073, 129, 183, and 259.

The novel “has a fair measure of that cheerful vivacity which distinguishes her from most female novelists of the day.”  Athenaeum, March 7, 1896

A “bright tale” with “sharply humorous characterization.” Academy, June 6, 1896

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/10792986.1984.emory.edu

---

Do you ever find yourself suddenly wondering whether everything you think and do is just  wrong?  This happens to me from time to time.  For example, recently I found myself wondering whether posting crossword puzzles and Victorian novel recommendations for free on the internet every fortnight might not be the best use I could find for my time.  Crazy stuff!  But there’s no limit to the human mind’s potential for self-delusion.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

327 It's-All-Wrong.puz

327 It's-All-Wrong.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

327 It’s All Wrong

---

A murderer inherits an estate from his victim and strives to atone to his daughter.

---

For Murray, see Novels 009, 068, 127, 181, and 225.

“The elements of the story . . . are rather well worn” but “every part of the book is well written and lively.” Academy, September 18, 1886

“A very neatly told story, and it shows some good bits of character”; the author “provides his readers with a good deal of entertainment, and his well-known vivacity of style presents it in a very acceptable form.”  Athenaeum, September 25, 1886

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://books.google.com/books?id=tIRBAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=cynic%20fortune%20murray&pg=PP11#v=onepage&q&f=false

---

What would we do without padding?  Everywhere—in the pages of student essays and of Victorian novels, through hours upon hours of concept albums and superhero movies, on the chests of women and the shoulders of men, in the résumés of politicians and the expense accounts of executives, on the knees of skateboarders and the walls of maniacs—padding enhances and protects us!  And yet how often is it mindlessly maligned!  Today’s puzzle offers in contrast a humble tribute.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

326-Padding.puz

326-Padding.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

326 Padding

---

A girl grows up to oppose her tyrannical grandfather.

---

For Paul, see Novels 025, 136, 198, 251, and 286.

“Within its own limits . . .  thoroughly satisfactory. . . .  We would liken it to a finished and delicate cabinet picture, in which there is no brilliant colour, and yet all is in harmony.” Athenaeum, April 6, 1872

“An amusing, animated, and well-told story.” Spectator, May 18, 1872

Download this fortnight’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/35n82s/alma990141810450107026

(Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the “view digitized copy” links to download the novel’s two volumes in pdf form)

---

In a few days some people will gather for an annual event in which they try to solve crosswords faster than each other.  As I’ve said before (see Crossword 070), I prefer to solve crosswords at a speed that allows me to ponder their nuances and ramifications.  Lately I’ve wondered whether, like many of my personal preferences, this one is actually based on universal, objective truth.

Doing something faster than somebody else is all well and good when the thing done is otherwise of little value or interest, like progressing along an oval track on foot or on a horse or in a car.  Such is not the case with savoring a cup of tea or a glass of wine, say, or strolling along a scenic lane, or solving a crossword.  But as crossword speed contests have proliferated, as crossword apps and web sites have added timers, crosswords have come to seem mere grid-shaped racing venues, equivalent to so many miles or meters of oval track, the view from which must be resolutely ignored by the committed competitor.

The crosswords on this web site will always provide, for those who will take the time, profound insight into the rich variety of human experience.  Solve them slowly.

---

Download this fortnight’s crossword:

325-Pulling-Ahead.puz

325-Pulling-Ahead.pdf

Solve this fortnight’s crossword online:

325 Pulling Ahead