Seven Vintage Pageturners

If you're looking for page-turning, guilty-pleasure fiction, then you might enjoy one of these vintage novels! Bestsellers of their day, they're now public domain; and most are available for free at Project Gutenberg.

1. Leonora (Maria Edgeworth, 1806)~  A nineteenth-century Fatal Attraction!  I kid you not... Despite the lovely and long-suffering heroine, this novel is not the conventional web of polite misunderstandings; rather, it's a Regency version of Lifetime TV-- and once started, there's no looking away.

2. St. Elmo (Augusta Jane Evans, 1866)~  A beautiful and freakishly erudite teenager wins the heart-- and saves the soul-- of an embittered Byronic hero... And as the characters Edna and St. Elmo both love to gab about ancient history/literature, the novel is filled with obscure references that I once (at age 14) tried to list-- although I quickly gave up on the project, as there are just so many!  This story is at once unabashedly romantic and pro-education, especially female education.  If you really want to fall in love, for goodness' sake study your classical languages!  Worked for Edna.

3. The Lamplighter (Maria Cummins, 1854)~  If you don't mind its rather florid moralizing, this is a sweet and heart-wrenching tale of a virtuous girl finding happiness in the cold, mercenary world.  And it kept my heart in my throat (What will happen when Gertrude and Willy meet again??)...!   Fans of Louisa May Alcott should check it out.

4. Camilla (Fanny Burney, 1796)~  As with Evelina, I wanted to scream "JUST TALK TO HIM!!"  But social and economic traps-- some of them humorous, all of them deplorable-- close around the naive, loyal Camilla in such agonizing succession that I always had to read "just one more chapter."  Let me tell you, modern romances have nothing on this one.

5. The Italian (Annotated) (Ann Radcliffe, 1797)~  By the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho, this Gothic novel doesn't offer the most accurate or sympathetic view of the Catholic Church; but it does provide plenty of page-turning suspense and vivid imagery.  One eerie scene-- in which the heroine Ellena walks on a lonely beach, shadowed by the distant figure of a monk-- is imprinted on my memory.

6. Belinda (Maria Edgeworth, 1801)~  I'm less enthusiastic here, as the hero lost major points with me by the end; but I enjoyed the ever-evolving friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour, which proved the most important and interesting aspect of the story.  I think that Lady Delacour's arc alone makes it worth a rainy-day read through!

7.  The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux, 1910)~  In comparison with the musical, the original version of this well-known story was more horror/thriller than romance-- and interestingly, too, I find it evocative of what a life devoted to music might mean for an unprotected, single girl of the nineteenth century (when a stage career would be incompatible with, say, an aristocratic marriage).  Here music isn't just a vehicle for romance; it's an all-absorbing force, almost a character in itself! And it demands all of her... (Definitely an all-absorbing book, too!)


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Seven reasons to read The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe) this Halloween

Image: Open Library Covers

Ann Ward Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
[Psst, it's free at Project Gutenberg]

Jane Austen mocked it in Northanger Abbey (1817)-- and I'll gleefully admit that this Gothic icon has drinking (or Halloween candy-eating) game potential!  Bottoms up each time heroine Emily St. Aubert (a) faints, (b) plays plaintive, melancholy music on her lute, or (c) composes a poem/song...  Or hey, just eat chocolate whenever the word "sublime" pops up in the text!  If you're in pursuit of a sort of 18th-century campiness, there's plenty of material here.

And you expected every bit of it, right?  ...However, I'm about to take the somewhat riskier step of asserting that-- swooniness aside-- this novel still works!  It spellbound me at age 16, and since then I've returned to it at least half a dozen times.  Here's what's to love:

1.  Page-turning qualities that obsessed Catherine Morland.  Despite some moralizing, Udolpho invites you to enter a dreamlike world of unearthly beauty that soon slides into nightmare.  There are slower spots, true-- but the atmosphere draws you in, the "mysteries" are suspenseful, and your mind will whirl with schemes for Emily's escape.  (Mine did, at least!)

2.  Romantic innocence.  Set in the Pyrenees, the first phase of Emily's romance with Valancourt is idyllic ("Oh, come on!  That would never happen")... Yet it's the sweetest fantasy: She's exploring a glorious landscape with her beloved father, all the while falling in love with a fellow traveler who shares all of her enthusiasms, and who-- blessedly-- loves her in return.

(Curl up on the couch and sigh.)

I like to linger a little in this epoch, because I know that it's soon to end.  And as the story progresses, I never fail to mourn its loss.

3.  First world problems, early-modern style.  It's fun to want to bang your head against the wall when Emily allows scruples (as we'd see them today) to thwart her happiness and endanger her life.

Simon Howden, freedigitalphotos.net

4.  Castle Udolpho is the last word in romantic terror.  Why is this door suddenly locked? Is someone-- or something-- concealed in the room next to mine?  Is that a ghost outside my window?  Does this secret passage ever end, and is it leading me through--shudder-- the catacombs?  Just trying to make sense of that apparently maze-like floor plan (where can she hide??) makes my heart race...

5.  Luminous bits of verse by Shakespeare, Thompson, Milton, and other poets ... They're well-chosen, enhance the atmosphere, and are definitely worth pausing to read (unlike "Emily's" compositions, which add little).

6.  This story extends beyond the supernatural drama.  What happens when two lovers meet after a year of widely divergent experiences?  We actually find out.

7.  Emily's character.  Many will disagree with me here, and understandably: At once impossibly beautiful, accomplished, and gentle, Emily embodies a cookie-cutter femininity prone to fainting fits, crying jags, and reliance on male rescuers.  True.

Yet she's far from weak.  No, I'm serious.... !  She stands up to her scheming aunt and evil step uncle; takes steps to secure her own freedom and financial independence; and refuses matrimony on any terms but her own.  Moreover, she has a strong sense of humor and empathy... While Emily falls short of our 21st-century standards of female agency, she nevertheless grows into a distinct presence on the page.  And it's fun to watch a stock character become a (stubborn, dignified, somewhat world-weary) person.


Have you read The Mysteries of Udolpho-- and if so, what did you think of it?  Would you call it a favorite?


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Why Burney's Evelina Is a Guilty Pleasure-- Seven Reasons

Fanny Burney, Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, 1778 (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1909).

I couldn't care less about some major plot points-- Lord Belmont and Mr. MacCartney, for example; and I routinely skip the cruel pranks played upon Madame Duval.  So why do I return to Evelina, again and again?

1. It's filled with situation comedy.  On that horrific day at the park when you unwittingly linked arms with two prostitutes, did your aristocratic crush come strolling by?  What about the day when your middle-class cousins borrowed his carriage without asking?  And that night at the opera, when... Okay, okay, I get it!  Stopping.

2.  It offers the vicarious thrill of entering (18th-century) London society for the first time.  A first ball, trips to Vauxhall and Ranelagh, dining out, shopping and having hair done up elaborately, meeting various men (mostly outrageous narcissists), and falling in love with one good one-- exhilarating!

3.  It satirizes class-based behavior.  What must you do when you meet in the drawing room that rakish baron who insulted you in the alley?  (Rugsweep, of course.  This is a no-win situation.)  And if wealthy people have money to throw away, why shouldn't they bet it on a footrace between two lower-class old women?  Gentry are behaving badly with every turn of the page!  I'm so glad to be armed with heaps of natural delicacy...

4.  It justifies nitpicking the manners of annoying people.  Your snobbish companions discuss their foodie interests over dinner?  How vulgar!  This just proves that I was completely right about them!

5.  All men adore Evelina.  It's a problem.  And a fantasy.  Since dozens of lovestruck fools played no part in my youth, I rather enjoy watching the ingénue beat them off (or try to)...  Would it be terrible to need a chaperone at every moment?  YES!  Still, I'd like to borrow that innocent-yet-dangerous allure for a day.

6.  Basic communication would solve so many of Evelina's difficulties.  If only my life were that simple!  At times I want to shake her while shouting "JUST TALK TO HIM!"  But seriously, this frustration is fun:  It's kind of wonderful to feel that happiness is right there, waiting to be grasped.

7.  Gossiping acquaintances, haughty aristocrats, and vulgar, scheming relations are duly embarrassed at the end.  Although Evelina is undoubtedly more forgiving than I could manage to be!


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My Cousin Rachel (du Maurier)

Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel

It's by the author of Rebecca-- and like Rebecca, its plot hinges on an enigmatic woman whom we "know" (if know we can) through the eyes of others.  Like Rebecca, too, it raises issues regarding the character of her spouse... And there's murder involved, possibly two murders.  Maybe.  It depends.

However, if by the end of Rebecca I knew exactly how to judge each character, My Cousin Rachel-- a complex, gripping, suspenseful narrative-- left me bewildered, shaken, mildly obsessed.  My mind went over and over it for days... Is Rachel-- formerly the Contessa Sangalletti-- evil, manipulative, and murderous; or merely manipulative; or innocent of all conscious design?  What to think of the two men (in many ways, the same man) who married her?  Is their narration trustworthy, and to what degree are they complicit in their own destruction?  Are they better or worse than she is?  Are they guilty?  And what of cultural difference?  ...Unlike Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel offers no "correct" perspective, but leaves us to draw our own conclusions.

If we can.  I'm still uncertain of mine!