1/4/2023 0 Comments Lyttony dresses![]() ![]() Why was Sir Reginald Glanville found prostrate in a rural cemetery? Who murdered a recently knighted gambler late one night on a deserted country road and for what reason? Open these 400 pages and settle back for an enjoyable weekend. But there are dark deeds aplenty in what became the big bestseller of 1828. Nor does he ever risk prison or desire anything better than to marry Ellen Glanville. Moreover, Henry Pelham is never accused of murder. "A determined young lady sets out to capture an aristocratic gentleman of wit, style and stubborn independence" - not at all true. Should you pick up this edition of the book, know straight off that everything said about the plot on the cover and fly-leaf description is utterly, ludicrously wrong. It was the 1828 text and offered, as an afterword, a short essay by Moers based on her chapter in The Dandy. A few years later, while searching through the Regency romances section of a used bookshop for some Georgette Heyer, I noticed a Popular Library paperback of Pelham and bought it. Moers spoke enthusiastically of its wit, outrageousness and dash - especially in the original 1828 version (subsequent editions being slightly subdued to Victorian taste). Still, I knew virtually nothing about Pelham - the writer's second novel - until I read about it in Ellen Moers's fine study, The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas," Charlotte Bronte la Melmoth the Wanderer, Bulwer-Lytton's occult Zanoni and A Strange Story are well worth searching out. You'll probably need to make a little effort to locate, say, J.S. But don't expect to just waltz into any mall bookstore and buy one off the paperback rack. Nearly all the works chosen ought to be in print, in some form or another, or can be found at the library or in used bookshops or on the Internet. To grant a little coherence to this desultory enterprise, I've arbitrarily decided to focus on 19th-century English (and Irish) fiction. Like most readers, I carry around a mental shelf of books that I mean to read, one of these days, given the chance. ![]() Roughly once a month for the coming year, I will write about a notable, but not too notable, 19th-century novel that I have Never Before Opened. But First Encounter will be a little different. Over the years, magazines have regularly, and laudably, published essays on neglected books. ![]()
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