Robert Elsmere - Paperback

by Humphrey Ward (Author)

Complete and unabridged, this edition is sure to become the definitive modern text of this epic novel from 1888 by Mrs. Humphrey Ward. This book caused a sensation when it was originally published, challenging established cultural mores regarding the practice of religion. This edition has been carefully crafted from the original with the spelling updated to modern American standards, and the foreign words and phrases faithfully annotated so that an English speaking readers may enjoy the work fully without knowing Latin, Greek, German, or French. This was one of the most influential books of its time, and holds up well today both as a compelling story and as a study in late Victorian culture. ---Excerpt--- About four o'clock on the afternoon of the day which was to be marked in the annals of Long Whindale as that of Mrs. Thornburgh's 'high tea, ' that lady was seated in the vicarage garden, her spectacles on her nose, a large couvre-pied over her knees, and the Whinborough newspaper on her lap. The neighborhood of this last enabled her to make an intermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of her house-wifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The vicar's wife was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest. All her solid preparations for the evening were over, and in her own mind she decided that with them there was no possible fault to be found. The cook, Sarah, had gone about her work in a spirit at once lavish and fastidious, breathed into her by her mistress. No better tongue, no plumper chickens, than those which would grace her board to-night were to be found, so Mrs. Thornburgh was persuaded, in the district. And so with everything else of a substantial kind. On this head the hostess felt no anxieties.

Author Biography

Mrs. Humphrey Ward (1851 - 1920), born Mary Augusta Arnold, was a British novelist and anti-suffragist. She was born in Tasmania to a prominent family poets and professors. One of her nephews was Aldous Huxley. She believed that society as a whole and women in particular were better off if issues of international relations, finance, law, and the military were left to men. She did believe, however, in a woman's place in local government. In 1908 she was a founder of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. She created and published the Anti-Suffrage Review in support of the movement. In addition to her anachronistic views on woman's suffrage, Ward held progressive (for their time) views on morality and religion, which were recurring themes in her novels. She also believed fervently in educating the poor and she established the Mary Ward Centre (formerly Passmore Edwards Settlement) for this purpose.