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

Women Novelists of the 'Seventies 55Courcey Laffan, Anne Thackeray, Jessie Fothergill and'Rita'. Adeline Sergeant was as yet busily engaged onlyin sharpening her quill. Of these novelists nine were aloneresponsible for about 554 publications in all, chiefly inthree volumes. An average of sixty-one each, that is,with a remainder that would suffice in mere paper for thecomplete works of Flaubert.Such a catalogue (and one no doubt far from complete),however reviving or otherwise its incidental effects, hasvery little connection with fiction as an art or even withbooks as literature, and it is no more of a map than is acollection of place names. It is also a confession of failure.For confronted with this vast reservoir I must confessthat I have merely dipped and dipped again. Its deepsand its shallows seem inexhaustible. During the 'seventiesalone 'that wicked Ouida' was responsible for nine novels,including Puck; Mrs Henry Wood for ten, including theJohnny Ludlow series, and Miss Braddon for sixteen, includingVixen and Joshua Haggard's Daughter.A hardly less arid and harrowing means of hinting atthe situation is to mention a few titles—a title being atleast as indicative of the character of a novel as of a man.A large number of the novels of the nineteenth centurywritten by women were called after their heroines—ortheir heroes. It matters little which, since both usuallyimply a pursuer and the pursued—only a slight jar of thekaleidoscope, whatever the consequent form and 'pattern'.For the rest, Miriam's Marriage, No Saint, Onlya Woman, Two Little Wooden Shoes, A Rise in the World,Goodbye, Sweetheart! Can This be Iove? The Doctor'sDilemma, Half a Million of Money, Wee Wifie, HerDearest Foe, Pearl Powder, Above Suspicion, Ought We toVisit Her? The Beautiful Miss Harrington, may surrendera glimpse of their general trend.Compare them with The Dove's Nest, The Light House,