Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Lady of Quality Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Lady of Quality Frances Hodgson Burnett

Benite, Paula
Burnett, Frances Hodgson

Paperback

Fiction Anthologies

ISBN10: 1540393607
ISBN13: 9781540393609
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Nov 14 2016
Pages: 274
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A Lady of Quality, first published in 1896, is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novels for adults and treads a completely different path to her famous work The Secret Garden. It tells the story of Clorinda Wildairs and is set in the 1600s. Her mother dies giving birth to her and her father has no interest in his three daughters. He lives a life of debauchery while his youngest daughter picks up some interesting habits in the stables. When he comes across the child and sees her riding his favourite horse, he takes a fancy to her. For a few years she is the renowned companion of drunkards until she transforms herself to catch a husband. One is particularly taken with her but her refusal has reverberations through the years. I have to say, I struggled with this one. The heroine is too changeable. She goes from being the companion of a bunch of old men to being the prize débutante to being a perfect wife. There are a lot of changes in her character the reader's meant to accept just because she's stunningly beautiful and wondrous and everyone loves her - as we are told on numerous occasions. Frequently, I felt as if I was actually reading a novel. The handiwork was evident and it was jarring. Two thirds in, the book suddenly becomes interesting with an unexpected event that I expected to throw the heroine into turmoil. It didn't and her life continued pretty much in the same vein. I felt cheated by the ending and more than a little irate at the time I'd wasted with Clorinda. Far more interesting, though, was her sister, Anne, who is meek and mild and knows everything Clorinda does. For me, Anne is the actual lady of quality and not her beautiful, fabulous sister. This book suffered from a lack of direction and the ability of the author to immerse herself so much in the heroine at the cost of believability. Not a great read by any stretch of the imagination.

Also in

Fiction Anthologies

View All