R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Women Novelists of the 'Seventies 53for some years in the publication of works of fiction'; andit was intended as a loyal tribute to Queen Victoria on thecelebration of her second Jubilee. It declined to ' assessthe merit' of living 'lady fictionists' (apparently preferringthat toast-and-water phrase to so simple ifsibilant a neologism as novelistesses). Its hospitality wasotherwise restricted to those women writers who did alltheir work after the Queen's accession.While, then, such 'famous novelists' as Mrs Gore,Mrs Bray, Mrs Hall and Mrs Marsh were given no nichein it, the works of Mrs Archer Clive, of Anne Manning,and of Mrs Stretton were duly appraised, and among itsactual contributors were Mrs MacQuoid and Mrs Parr,whose pen-name was 'Holme Lee'. In spite of the factthat Queen Victoria's second Jubilee is so recent anevent that all novelists now aged thirty-three were bornamid the rumour of its drums and tramplings, in howmany minds, I wonder, will these names awake positivelyrousing echoes.'Views' on fiction, we might assume, however, wouldnot at that time differ very much from our own. Neverthelesswe find so shrewd and vigorous a critic as MrsOliphant asserting, first, that in 1897 homage to theBrontes exceeded that accorded to Dickens, Thackerayand George Eliot; next, that Charles Reade and Trollopewere almost forgotten; and last, that the ' nobler arts' offiction are all of them missing from the Bronte novels.When, however, in the course of her paper she refers toCharlotte as a demure little person, silent and shy,' plain,even ugly—a small woman with a big nose, and no othernoticeable feature—not even the bright eyes of genius',and when finally she expresses the hope that Miss Bronte's'memory will be allowed to rest'; we become consciousof a certain bias. Whether or not, straws like these shownot only the way the critical breeze is apt to blow, but