A Love Story by William Harvey Christie

Description

A Love Story opens where so much English fiction has quietly begun, at the gates of an old house. The mansion of the Delms is “a vast and venerable pile,” its wings thrown wide, its fluted ledges running the full length of the building — and Christie takes his time setting the family who live inside it before he lets his story move. It is a novel of the old school: patient, observant, and unhurried, building its characters through the seasons of country life.

The Delms are a house divided between duty and desire. Around them Christie arranges the whole apparatus of the Victorian romance — the claims of family honor, the interference of jealous relatives, the long-kept secret that surfaces at precisely the wrong moment, and the young lovers whose happiness depends on the courage of the people who love them best. The prose carries the flavor of an older England, where sermons and summits, favour and formality, govern every conversation.

Christie was a novelist who worked in the shadow of the giants of the 1860s and 1870s, and A Love Story shows both the strengths and the charms of the minor Victorian tradition: a well-built plot, a warm interest in family life, and a firm confidence that the emotions of ordinary people are worth a novelist’s full attention. For readers of Trollope and George Eliot who want something quieter and swifter, it is a genuine discovery.

Why readers pick it up

• An overlooked Victorian romance with a carefully built, satisfying plot.
• Lively domestic portraiture of an English country household.
• A gentle, absorbing read for fans of classic romantic fiction.

About this DodaBooks edition

This edition brings you the complete text with clean professional typesetting, a working table of contents, and optimized reading on phone, tablet, and e-reader, so the slow flowering of Christie’s romance reads as naturally as it was written.