Oakshott Castle, And, the Grange Garden

Oakshott Castle and The Grange Garden is a combined volume containing two short novels by Henry Kingsley, published in 1872. The two stories were originally serialised separately and were collected together for the book edition. Both are late period Kingsley, written during the years when he was working at a fast pace to keep up with his publishing obligations, and both show the strengths and limitations of his late style.

Oakshott Castle is the longer of the two stories. It is a romance set partly in the English country house of the title and partly in continental Europe, with the typical Kingsley mix of military scenes, romantic complications, and a long inheritance question that ties the various subplots together. The opening chapters at Oakshott Castle are among the most evocative Kingsley wrote in his later period, with the kind of patient descriptions of houses and gardens that he had always done well. The European sections are less convincing and depend on the kind of melodramatic coincidence that Kingsley reached for more often as his career went on.

The Grange Garden is shorter and tighter. It is essentially an extended sketch of country life, organised around a particular garden and the family that lives near it. The plot is slight and the interest is in the texture of country observation rather than in any complicated story. Some readers prefer this kind of looser Kingsley to his more elaborate novels, and The Grange Garden has its quiet admirers.

The combined volume runs about three hundred and fifty pages. Neither story is in the first rank of Kingsley’s work, but both are pleasant and undemanding. For readers who have already worked through Geoffry Hamlyn, Ravenshoe, and Austin Elliot, this volume gives a sense of the later Kingsley working at lower pressure. It pairs naturally with Silcote of Silcotes and with The Harveys, both also from the early 1870s, when Kingsley was producing fiction at a steady but slightly weary pace.