"We all of us enjoy a story of battle and adventure", writes Charlotte Yonge. She then goes on to assert, in true Victorian fashion, that there is a moral value in examples of courage, endurance, and selflessness which move and elevate our spirits. So "the young and ardent learn absolutely to look upon danger as an occasion for evincing the highest qualities." These Golden Deeds, though some she admits, may be of questionable historical value, "were far too beautiful not to tell." Hooray for battle and adventure, and for heroes and heroines!
Nearly two hundred years before Braveheart was filmed, Miss Jane Porter's novel of the Scottish Highlands, The Scottish Chiefs, was a blockbuster success. Porter became entranced at a young age by the oral history of Scotland's heroes. "I was hardly six years of age when I first heard the names of William Wallace and Robert Bruce ... from the maids in the nursery, and the serving-man in the kitchen". Her adult novel celebrated "high chivalric loyalty and the spirit of patriotic freedom on just principles". In a postscript Porter tells how the novel was banned in France by the Emperor Napoleon, as a dangerous piece of writing!
"May we be next year–In America!" As a child, Mary Antin lived in the Jewish ghetto of Polotzk, Russia. Her parents emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts when she was twelve. Antin vividly describes both her childhood in a small Jewish community, and the challenges of an immigrant family adapting to life in a new land. Antin herself "worked to win America", identifying with the new life in part because of the wider opportunities it offered her as a woman. Yet she could not forget her "clinging past." "Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul."
"They called her Billy for the sake of the boy her father wanted, and Louise for the girl her mother had longed for to lighten that terrible loneliness which the far frontier brings to the women who brave its stern emptiness." At eighteen, after her father dies in an accident, Billy Louise comes home from school to run their ranch. "The Billy of her tried to take his place, and the Louise of her attempted to take care of her mother, who was unfitted both by nature and habit to take care of herself." B. M. Bower's novel is notable for its vivid portraits of young Billy Louise, trying to fill the roles of both son and daughter; and Marthy Melk, an older neighbor whose marriage and ranch are failing in spite of her unending work.
Katrinka, a young Russian girl, lives happily with her family until her parents are deported to Siberia by the Czar. Then she must find a way to survive and support her younger brother. She triumphs, in more than one way, through her love of and skill at dancing. Writing in 1915, Eggleston Haskell draws a sympathetic portrait of both peasant and Czar, and clearly shows her love of Russian culture.
Here's a selection for those of you who've gotten tired of proper and well-mannered heroines. Like the author, the heroine of George Sand's first novel leaves her husband for another man. In Indiana's case, the man she has fallen in love with is a rake and a rotter. Written from "an overpowering instinct of outcry and rebellion" Sand's novel opposes the victimization of women both within and without the social institution of marriage. One of her characters advises: "follow the course of your destiny ... Do not break the chains that bind you to society, respect its laws if they protect you, accept its judgments if they are fair to you: but if some day it calumniates you and spurns you, have pride enough to find a way to do without it."
Mary Ward is best known for the tremendous success of her 25 novels. A complex woman, she is one of the last great authors of the Victorian world, and at the same time a harbinger of change, sympathetically addressing the impact of issues such as religious doubt and socialism. In the early years of the first World War, Theodore Roosevelt asked her to present English's position to the American people, to encourage America's entry into the war. The result was England's Effort. In it, Mary Ward describes England's war effort, including many of the changes that were occurring in women's lives as they moved from homes out into factories to do war work.
One of the dangers of renting a "semi-detached" house is the problem of the neighbors! Whatever is one to do? For it is certain that the inhabitants of one's "semi-detachment" will include a fat old woman who wears black lace mittens, a daughter who plays hideously on the pianoforte, and a small boy who will throw stones. In short, they will be shockingly vulgar! Or will they? The manners (and lack thereof) of the inhabitants of Dulham are a matter of considerable concern in this light-hearted novel, as Emily Eden satirises English society in the 1800's.
Australian children's writer Mary Grant Bruce created an appealing vision of life in the bush in her Billabong series. Norah, the young daughter of the homestead, is her father's much-loved "little mate". She is just as capable, competent, and intelligent as her brothers, and shares in the work of the homestead. In this book, the combined freedom and responsibility of the Billabong youths contrasts sharply with the self-centeredness and arrogance of a visiting city cousin.
Frances Browne became blind as a very young child, as a result of smallpox. One of twelve children, Frances learned by listening to her siblings' lessons, and bribed them to read to her in return for stories of her own invention. Her collection of children's fairy tales, Granny's Wonderful Chair., has delighted generations of readers. Surprisingly, it is notable in part because of its vivid pictorial quality.
In 1887, a young teacher, Annie Sullivan, met a 6-year-old blind and deaf girl, Helen Keller. Sullivan helped to pioneer methods of blind and deaf instruction, and Helen Keller discovered the world. Helen Keller's account of her early life is one of the first and most famous accounts of the difficulties and triumphs experienced by a severely disabled person.
The first world war was a time of great distress and deep depression for Lucy Maud Montgomery, writer of the Anne of Green Gables books. Here, she chronicles the lives of Anne's children in the years leading up to and including the war. But even more, she chronicles the ways in which the war tore open the precious, enclosed, world of Ingleside, confronting it with events and people which had seemed worlds away, and confronting the people in it with difficult choices.
Italian educator Maria Montessori was a major influence in revolutionizing children's education at the turn of the century. This is one of the earliest English translations of her landmark work, "The Montessori Method", in which she discusses psychology, politics, and the education of children. It continues to inspire teachers and parents today.
What possible connection could there be, between the disappearances of a not-so-respectable politician, and an ever-so-respectable maiden aunt? How are they connected to a seedy nightclub called the White Cat? This is one of the earliest mysteries by Mary Roberts Rinehart, mistress of "Had I But Known..."
Ruth Sawyer was a gifted storyteller and a prolific writer, with a passion for folk-tales and a great affection for Christmas stories. It seems particularly fitting that her first book is a collection of folk tales, bound together by the surrounding story of a lonely young boy who is separated from his family at Christmas-time. Within that framework, Sawyer emphasizes the importance of overcoming prejudice and presents a powerful appeal for good-will between all people.
Miss Mulock's reputation was made by this novel. It follows the fortunes of a homeless boy who rises from tanner's apprentice, through his own good character and considerable hard work, to become master of his own business and the center of a prosperous family. My mother says that this was her favorite romance as a girl.
The Civil War split families apart and left many wounds, both physical and emotional. In this children's book, a feisty little girl helps to reconcile the separated members of her family. The book inspired a number of sequels about the main character. Shirley Temple played the heroine in 1935, with Lionel Barrymore, Evelyn Venable, and Mister Bo Jangles!
In the aftermath of World War I, Enid Bagnold went to France to serve as a driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She recreates many of her experiences in her first novel. By day, a job as a driver for the French army and the hardships of the war require Bagnold's protagonist, Fanny, to be competent, self-assured and independent. But Fanny is also in love with a French officer, and her passionate enjoyment of life is revealed in their relationship.
Mrs. Moleworth wrote a number of children's stories, most of them blends of magic and realism, with female children as main characters. In The Cuckoo Clock Griselda, who is lonely living with her old aunts, goes on magical adventures and learns many things from the cuckoo who lives in the household clock.
"I am sure I am not born for a jog-trot life; I am too restless and too romantic." Passionately in love with the charismatic Eastern and African explorer, Sir Richard Burton, Isabel Arundel fulfilled her ambitions for a "wild, roving, vagabond life" by marrying him. She deeply involved herself in his translation and publishing work, and also wrote her own travel books about the East. Her controversial accounts of their lives and their marriage were accused of romanticism and worse by his relatives, who disliked her.
The French revolution comes alive in these first-person accounts of the Terror and the Tower. Through letters, diaries, and later reports, we follow the experiences of the royal family as seen and recorded by King Louis XVI's sister, Madame Élisabeth, who was herself sent to the guillotine; his daughter, the Duchesse d'Angoulême; and Cléry, the King's valet.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of the most famous English women poets. She considered Aurora Leigh, a combination of epic poem with sensational novel, "the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions about Life and Art have entered." The heroine, like the author, believed that women have the right to pursue and excel in their chosen creative work, and to live rich and fulfilling lives.
In 1909, Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature "because of the noble idealism, the wealth of fancy and the spiritual quality that characterize her works." One of the books for which she was honoured was The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a children's story. Lagerlöf seamlessly incorporates the geography, folk-lore, and natural world of Sweden into this rollicking account of a bad boy who is enchanted to the size of a thumb, and whisked off on the back of a goose!
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