Miss Marjoribanks

Home from school and freshly aware of her own talents, Lucilla Marjoribanks decides that the provincial town of Carlingford needs organizing, and she is plainly the person to do it. Over ten years she reshapes its dinner parties, manages her widowed father’s household, steers marriages, and quietly rules local society, all while insisting she acts only for the good of others. Margaret Oliphant plays Lucilla’s cheerful self-assurance for comedy, yet lets real feeling and disappointment show beneath it, producing a heroine often set beside Jane Austen’s Emma. Published in 1866 as part of the Chronicles of Carlingford, it is one of the wittiest Victorian novels about a clever woman with nowhere grand to put her gifts. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available to download.