Iole

Briggs arrives at a lonely railway station to deal with a poet's troubled property, only to hear a local account of artistic ambition gone wrong. Guilford's woodland community once sold finely bound books and elaborate furniture. Now the workshops have closed, wages have gone unpaid, and a mortgage threatens his house. Robert W. Chambers turns this business predicament into comedy about the distance between lofty ideals and the practical work of keeping an enterprise alive.

Elsewhere, Lissa and Harrow discuss art, happiness and the books her father allows her to read. Her eagerness for stories of contemporary life meets his excited recommendations, and their literary conversation becomes increasingly affectionate. Published in 1905, Iole combines a failed arts venture with jokes about fashionable taste and competing ideas of good writing. Its appeal lies in the collision of solemn cultural pronouncements with everyday feelings and financial pressures.