The Twelfth Hour

Ada Leverson’s first novel follows the three Crofton siblings through one long, warm Edwardian summer among London’s fashionable rich. Felicity, married to the charming but perpetually absent Lord Chetwode, watches her husband vanish on ever-longer hunts for horses and antiques. Her younger sister Sylvia is caught between the wealthy Greek her father favours and Frank Woodville, the penniless secretary she actually loves, while their schoolboy brother Savile, home from Eton, nurses a hopeless passion for an opera singer and appoints himself the family’s fixer. Leverson tells it all with the light, mischievous wit that made Oscar Wilde call her “The Sphinx.” Anyone who enjoys drawing-room comedy and gentle social satire of the leisured classes will find this an elegant, quick-witted introduction to a neglected Edwardian voice.