Molly Bawn

Eleanor Massereene, called Molly, is an eighteen-year-old orphan raised in rural Irish quiet by her half-brother John and his family. An invitation from her wealthy, estranged grandfather carries her to Herst Royal, an English country house where rank, inheritance and courtship are all in play. Molly flirts, teases and declines to behave, and her attachment to the young lieutenant Tedcastle Luttrell survives more jealousy than either of them bargained for. Hungerford wrote some sixty books as “The Duchess”, and this 1878 novel is the one that lasted. It holds the earliest known printing of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in its modern wording, gets a passing mention in the eighteenth chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, and reached the screen as a 1916 silent film. Light Victorian romance, done with charm and a sharp ear for drawing-room talk.